Toward the Unknown Region was the first major choral piece by the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, a setting of a poem by Walt Whitman. Described by Vaughan Williams as a "Song for chorus and orchestra", it was premiered at the Leeds Festival in October 1907.
Vaughan Williams loved the poetry of Walt Whitman throughout his adult life. He had been introduced to Whitman's work by Bertrand Russell while they were undergraduates at Cambridge. The musicologist Elliott Schwartz has commented that Vaughan Williams was particularly attracted to Whitman by traits that are paralleled in his music: "the concern for the development of a national art independent of foreign influences and the recurring theme of mysticism and exploration". The composer's first settings of words by Whitman were two vocal duets with violin obbligato: "The Last Invocation" and "The Birdsâ Love-Song". He later rejected these songs, calling one "perfectly awful" and the other "an unconscious crib". His first canonical setting of Whitman was composed in late 1904 or early 1905, using the words of "Darest thou now, O soul" from the "Whispers of Heavenly Death" section of Leaves of Grass:
The piece is dedicated to the composer's sister-in-law Florence Maitland in memory of her husband, F. W. Maitland, Downing Professor of the Laws of England at Cambridge, whose recent death had grieved Vaughan Williams.
The composer conducted the first performance, which was given at the Leeds Festival on 10 October 1907, in a concert otherwise conducted by his former professor at the Royal College of Music, Sir Charles Stanford. The London premiere of the piece was conducted by Stanford two months later.
The music critic of The Times, J. A. Fuller Maitland, wrote:
Later analysts note the influence of older composers: Stanford, Elgar and particularly Hubert Parry, another of Vaughan Williams's former professors, whose Blest Pair of Sirens (1887) is, according to both Michael Kennedy (1980) and Christopher Palmer (1993), a model in form and general outline for Toward the Unknown Region.
The work is scored for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in B, bass clarinet in B, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in F, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 harps, organ and strings. The chorus is in the traditional four vocal parts.
The duration is typically between 11 and 13 minutes.