Ice Cold Dreams Sinfonia Antartica Vaughan Williams

The outcome is often one of two scenarios: a hero’s triumph or a hero’s death. For while Roald Amundsen sent a telegram to Norway in 1912 with the words “The Pole reached the fourteenth of December 1911. All well. Roald Amundsen”, Scott and his companions perished of hunger and cold in the polar wilderness in the same year. “I don’t think I can write any more. For God’s sake: take care of our people” he wrote in his final diary entry.

The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) first encountered the polar drama through his work with the music to the film “Scott of the Antarctic”. The film music was reworked to become Symphony No. 7, Sinfonia antartica (1952), but retained many of its cinematic qualities. Here we can “hear” the frozen ice landscape, feel the wind whistle through our ears, and experience the atmosphere when the inevitable finally takes place, the wordless choir of souls vanishing into the white horizon.

(Text: Thomas Erma Møller; Translation (from Norwegian): Sarah Osa; In photo: Amundsen on the South Pole; Photo: Olav Bjaaland/Norwegian Polar Institute)