Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on Greensleeves | Igor Sirotinsky, guitar

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on Greensleeves (arr. for guitar by Igor Sirotinsky) recorded at the Abbey of Villers-la-Ville, Belgium This exquisite four-minute orchestral miniature has far eclipsed the song it was inspired by: namely, ‘Greensleeves’, a traditional melody that was doing the rounds in the days of the Tudors and which was put to masterful use here by Vaughan Williams. He didn’t create it as a stand-alone piece, though; instead, it was initially used in the third act of the composer’s Shakespeare-inspired opera Sir John in Love. Vaughan Williams once commented, “The art of music above all arts is the expression of the soul of the nation“. In this delightful piece, he manages to capture the very essence of England in music. The serene, pastoral sounds evoke images of bucolic bliss, with lyrical string writing and particularly descriptive flute passages. The title of Fantasia is in some ways misleading: the work is neither long enough nor complex enough to deserve the description; instead