Ralph Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending. Iona Brown & Sir Neville Marriner/ASMF. 4K UHD

4K UHD (my photos only - the opening image lacks that native resolution). Background When I was a very young boy, I used to lie down in my local meadows in Derbyshire and listen to skylarks as they hovered high above in full song. It was a perfect reverie - a transcendent experience which has stayed with me my whole life. I wanted to recall those experiences here in low, ultra-wide angle photography. I regret very much their decline in numbers at the hands of hostile agriculture (see below). Like Vaughan Williams’ Tallis Fantasia, this is a pastoral work of transcendent beauty and power. The Lark Ascending was inspired by George Meredith’s 122-line poem of the same name about the skylark (Alauda arvensis). He included this portion of Meredith’s poem on the flyleaf of the published work: He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. For singing till his heaven fills,