Is My Team Ploughing?
Cards (9)
- This poem is a conversation between a dead man and his living friend. At first the dead man is assured that his girlfriend no longer grieves and has moved on. However, in the final stanza, it is implied that his girlfriend is now with his living friend - a devastating revelation.
- Vaughan Williams
- Omits the third and fourth verses of Housman's poem
- The structure of the song is modified strophic with three pairs of verses
- Structure of the song1. AB2. AB3. A1B1
- Bars 1-18
- A: The conversation between two young men is contained in separate verses of Housman's poem. The odd numbered verses have the words of the ghost. The even numbered verses have the response of the living man.
- The music of the dead man is marked misterioso and pianissimo and is to be sung as if from the distance.
- After a brief chromatic link in the accompaniment, the living man's response is agitated and has loud repeated triplet chords on the piano, with a countermelody in the solo cello.
- Bars 19-37
- A: The music of the first two verses is repeated.
- B:
- Bars 38-end
- A1: The music starts the same as in the previous pairs of verses, though the dead man's music is now higher in pitch and the instrumental accompaniment has agitated tremolos.
- B1: The response rises to a powerful climax on a high A♭ (bar 45) with tutti accompaniment. It then rises a semitone higher still for the final climax on a top A in bar 50 as the living man announces he has taken a dead man's girl for his own. There is a sudden hush as the final line comes.
- The instrumentation is reduced to a solo cello and piano from bar 9 of ‘Is My Team Ploughing?
- The music for tenor soloist is not particularly virtuosic. There are occasional high notes such as the top A for the word ‘dead’ in ‘dead man’s sweetheart’ in ‘Is My Team Ploughing?’, but most of the music is comfortably within the standard tenor range.
- In ‘Is My Team Ploughing?’ the long, held notes enable the voice to sing in free time, in the manner of a recitative.