It starts with the darkest, richest sounds a violin can make, then rises to an airy lightness, and it has become far and away Britain's most popular piece of classical music. Last week The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams was voted the country's favourite work and shortly afterwards it was confirmed that it will once again adorn the Proms programme, played this time by soloist Janine Jansen in an evening devoted to Vaughan Williams and his fellow English composer, William Alwyn.

But perhaps now the broad appeal of this rhapsody is threatening to cloud its power. And perhaps its strong association with bucolic English landscapes has distanced audiences from the serious themes Vaughan Williams had in mind when he wrote it on the eve of war in 1914.

Although The Lark had to knock Rachmaninov off the top spot this year, its victory was no surprise. The piece has a growing hold on the national psyche. In a poll of more than 100,000 people run by the radio station Classic FM it beat not only the Russian composer's Piano Concerto No 2, but also Elgar's Enigma Variations, Beethoven's "Emperor" Piano Concerto, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Vaughan William's own Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Three years ago it also came top of a poll to choose the nation's best Desert Island Discs track, and from 2007 to 2010 the work repeatedly came in at No 1 in Classic FM's annual hall of fame poll. What is more, the effect is felt across the Atlantic. In 2011 it was ranked No 2 in America in a radio poll which asked New Yorkers for the music they wanted to hear to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This year's renewed success in the British poll was eased by its use in a poignant scene in Coronation Street, where the music accompanied the death of Hayley Cropper. Classic FM presenter John Suchet has welcomed the return of the tune to the top of the poll, saying: "Exactly 100 years after Vaughan Williams composed The Lark Ascending, its poignancy and beauty are as powerful as ever.'' But when Jansen picks up her bow in the Albert Hall on 13 August she will have to cut through audience assumptions about a work in danger of becoming as cosy as a cream tea.

"It is important the piece doesn't just become a pastoral wallpaper, a pretty reflection on a rural scene," said Roger Wright, controller of Radio 3 and the BBC Proms, who announced his final concert line-up in the role on Thursday. "There is loss there too and the sense of a difficult time in a country's history. It should not simply be a piece to relax to."

For the leading cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, the popularity of Vaughan Williams is both interesting and deserved. "He has tapped into something about the English. There is a kind of nostalgic essence there and a real interest in English folk songs, along with his friend Holst." He believes each live performance even of a well-known work can still be different. "A piece like this lives and breathes in performance. It is never the same."

The Lark Ascending was composed as a response to George Meredith's poem of the same name and the composer copied its lines describing the bird's "silver chain of sound" on the fly-leaf of his score. Although Vaughan Williams was once thought to have been watching troops embark for France while he composed the piece, this story came from an account written much later by his wife Ursula.

What is known, however, is that Vaughan Williams was holidaying on the coast in Margate in Kent on the day Britain entered the first world war. The resort was not an embarkation point, but ships were engaging in fleet exercises. The composer later told the story that the tune came into his head as he walked the cliff, at which point he jotted down the notes. A young scout then made a citizen's arrest, assuming he was scribbling details of the coastline for the enemy.

A revised version of the work was completed in Bristol in 1920 with the help of the English violinist Marie Hall and a full orchestral version was first played in London on June 1921, under the baton of the renowned Adrian Boult. Its violin cadenzas have been its trademark ever since. Actor Peter Sallis, star of Last of the Summer Wine and the voice of Wallace in the Wallace and Gromit animated films, has requested that a copy of The Lark Ascending be buried with him, while the playwright Jez Butterworth chose it to set the scene for his hit play Jerusalem.

For Wright, who will take up his new role as chief executive at Aldeburgh Music in Suffolk this autumn, it is one of those pieces of music to which "our responses have been conditioned".

He said: "A lot of the pieces that we associate closely with a particular idea or image were not actually composed for that purpose or with that in mind. Grieg's morning theme from Peer Gynt is often linked with images of fjords and Nordic landscapes, but was actually written to accompany the bit in Ibsen's play where Gynt is looking out across the desert.

"One of the potential difficulties with the way classical music is presented is that it's positioned as something to do with mood. With something like The Lark Ascending, or Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, people are told it is about a pastoral view, so you can listen while you are doing something else. This is particularly the case with a reflective piece."

Live performance, Wright argues, is the best antidote. "You get a chance to have your own reaction and you are there in the moment, just concentrating. Nigel Kennedy did that with The Lark Ascending at the Last Night of the Proms for us last year and Janine Jansen does much the same thing when she plays it."