First thoughts aren't always the best

So, I finally managed to get my hands on the new Richard Hickox CD that features Ralph Vaughan Williams's 1908 Nocturne, an orchestral setting of Whitman's "Whispers of heavenly death."

The reason this was of such interest to me is that one of the works in a recital I'm working on for the spring is RVW's 1925 setting of the same poem, for baritone and piano. The differences are amazing--the two settings are like night and day, except for the fact that they each end in an Impressionistic blur. The earlier setting is (unsurprisingly) louder, busier, and quite moving. But the most startling difference is length--the earlier version is twice as long as the later version, which, at nearly four minutes, is already quite long for such a short text (about a dozen lines). Perhaps the relative "compression" of the later work, amongst many other qualities, makes it is by far the more effective of the two settings--it has a hypnotic quality to it that isn't found in the earlier setting, and the simpler forces make the quirky harmonies even more startling. [I find it's quite possibly RVW's most "French" work.]