Twenty Minutes - Fantasia on a Theme - Fantasia on a Theme - The Captain's Apprentice

Roy Palmer's series on the folksongs Vaughan Williams collected concludes with The Captain's Apprentice, quoted in Flos Campi, performed in this evening's Prom and which provides the haunting melody in the Norfolk Rhapsody. Roy explains the social as well as musical significance of this song of an apprentice destroyed by a brutal ship's captain. Vaughan Williams heard the song, uncannily close to the plot of Peter Grimes, from 'Duggie' Carter, a King's Lynn fisherman and, in the very pub where he sat in the corner and noted it down, historian Dr Paul Richards explains the social as well as musical significance of the song. And Roy also unearths recordings from North America and the Norfolk traditional singer Harry Cox.