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Ralph Vaughan
Williams
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"Vaughan Williams" redirects here. For the cricketer, see Vaughan
Williams (cricketer). For the surname and other holders of the surname,
see Vaughan Williams (surname).
This person's surname is Vaughan Williams, not Williams.

Vaughan Williams c. 1920
[n 1]
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM (/reɪf vɔːn/ ( listen); 12 October
1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include

operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and
orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over sixty
years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his
output marked a decisive break in British music from its
German-dominated style of the 19th century.
Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral

views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to
be of service to his fellow citizens, and believed in making music as
available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur
and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding
his true voice until his late thirties; his studies in 1907–1908 with the
French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his
music and free it from Teutonic influences.
Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted

for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to
tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Among the most familiar of his
other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
and The Lark Ascending(1914). His vocal works include hymns,
folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight
works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Although none of
his operas became popular repertoire pieces, his ballet Job: A Masque
for Dancing (1930) was successful and has been frequently staged.
Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams's

personal life. The First World War, in which he served in the army, had
a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and
devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much
younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on
composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last
symphony months before his death at the age of eighty-five. His works
have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire, and all
his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been
recorded.
Contents
1Life and career

1.1Early years
1.2Royal College of Music and Trinity College,
Cambridge
1.3Early career
1.4Ravel; rising fame; First World War
1.5Inter-war years
1.61939–1952
1.7Second marriage and last years
2Music
2.1Symphonies
2.1.1Sea, London and Pastoral
Symphonies (1910–1922)
2.1.2Symphonies 4–6 (1935–1948)
2.1.3Sinfonia antartica, Symphonies 8 and
9 (1952–1957)
2.2Other orchestral music
2.3Chamber and instrumental
2.4Vocal music
2.4.1Songs
2.4.2Choral music
2.5Stage works
3Recordings
4Honours and legacy
5Notes, references and sources
5.1Notes
5.2References
5.3Sources
6Further reading
7External links
Vaughan Williams was born at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, the third

child and younger son of the vicar, the Reverend Arthur Vaughan
Williams (1834–1875) and his wife, Margaret, néeWedgwood
(1842–1937).[2][n 2] His paternal forebears were of mixed English and
Welsh descent; many of them went into the law or the Church. The
judges Sir Edward and Sir Roland Vaughan Williams were respectively
Arthur's father and brother.[4] Margaret Vaughan Williams was a
great-granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood and niece of Charles
Darwin.[n
3]
Leith Hill Place, Surrey, Vaughan Williams's childhood home
Arthur Vaughan Williams died suddenly in February 1875, and his

widow took the children to live in her family home, Leith Hill Place,
Wotton, Surrey.[5]
The children were under the care of a nurse, Sara
Wager, who instilled in them not only polite manners and good
behaviour but also liberal social and philosophical opinions.[6] Such
views were consistent with the progressive-minded tradition of both

sides of the family. When the young Vaughan Williams asked his
mother about Darwin's controversial book On the Origin of Species, she
answered, "The Bible says that God made the world in six days. Great
Uncle Charles thinks it took longer: but we need not worry about it, for it
is equally wonderful either way".[7]
In 1878, at the age of five, Vaughan Williams began receiving piano

lessons from his aunt, Sophy Wedgwood. He displayed signs of musical
talent early on, composing his first piece of music, a four-bar piano
piece called "The Robin's Nest", in the same year. He did not greatly
like the piano, and was pleased to begin violin lessons the following
year.[5][8] In 1880, when he was eight, he took a correspondence course
in music from Edinburgh University and passed the associated
examinations.[8]
In September 1883 he went as a boarder to Field House preparatory

school in Rottingdean on the south coast of England, forty miles from
Wotton. He was generally happy there, although he was shocked to
encounter for the first time social snobbery and political conservatism,
which were rife among his fellow pupils.[9] From there he moved on to
the public school Charterhouse in January 1887. His academic and

sporting achievements there were satisfactory, and the school
encouraged his musical development.[10] In 1888 he organised a

concert in the school hall, which included a performance of his G major
Piano Trio (now lost) with the composer as violinist.[5]
While at Charterhouse Vaughan Williams found that religion meant less

and less to him, and for a while he was an atheist. This softened into "a
cheerful agnosticism",[11] and he continued to attend church regularly to
avoid upsetting the family. His views on religion did not affect his love of
the Authorised Version of the Bible, the beauty of which, in the words of
Ursula Vaughan Williams in her 1964 biography of the composer,
remained "one of his essential companions through life."[11] In this, as in
many other things in his life, he was, according to his biographer

Michael Kennedy, "that extremely English product the natural
nonconformist with a conservative regard for the best tradition".[12]
Hubert Parry, Vaughan Williams's first composition teacher at the Royal

College of Music
In July 1890 Vaughan Williams left Charterhouse and in September he

was enrolled as a student at the Royal College of Music (RCM),
London. After a compulsory course in harmony with Francis Edward
Gladstone, professor of organ, counterpoint and harmony, he studied
organ with Walter Parratt and composition with Hubert Parry. He
idolised Parry,[13] and recalled in his Musical Autobiography (1950):
Vaughan Williams's family would have preferred him to have remained

at Charterhouse for two more years and then go on to Cambridge
University. They were not convinced that he was talented enough to
pursue a musical career, but feeling it would be wrong to prevent him
from trying, they had allowed him to go to the RCM.[n 4] Nevertheless, a
university education was expected of him, and in 1892 he temporarily

left the RCM and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spent
three years, studying music and history.[5]
Among those with whom Vaughan Williams became friendly at

Cambridge were the philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell,
the historian G. M. Trevelyanand the musician Hugh Allen.[2]

[16] He felt
intellectually overshadowed by some of his companions, but he learned
much from them and formed lifelong friendships with several.[17] Among
the women with whom he mixed socially at Cambridge was Adeline

Fisher, the daughter of Herbert Fisher, an old friend of the Vaughan
Williams family. She and Vaughan Williams grew close, and in June
1897, after he had left Cambridge, they became engaged to be
married.[18][n 5]
Charles Villiers Stanford, Vaughan Williams's second composition teacher
at the RCM
During his time at Cambridge Vaughan Williams continued his weekly

lessons with Parry, and studied composition with Charles Wood and
organ with Alan Gray. He graduated as Bachelor of Music in 1894 and
Bachelor of Arts the following year.[5] After leaving the university he
returned to complete his training at the RCM. Parry had by then

succeeded Sir George Grove as director of the college, and Vaughan
Williams's new professor of composition was Charles Villiers Stanford.
Relations between teacher and student were stormy. Stanford, who had
been adventurous in his younger days, had grown deeply conservative;
he clashed vigorously with his modern-minded pupil. Vaughan Williams
had no wish to follow in the traditions of Stanford's idols, Brahms and
Wagner, and he stood up to his teacher as few students dared to do.[20]
Beneath Stanford's bluster lay a recognition of Vaughan Williams's

talent and a desire to help the young man correct his opaque
orchestration and extreme predilection for modal music.[21]

In his second spell at the RCM (1895–1896) Vaughan Williams got to
know a fellow student, Gustav Holst, who became a lifelong friend.
Stanford emphasised the need for his students to be self-critical, but
Vaughan Williams and Holst became, and remained, one another's
most valued critics; each would play his latest composition to the other
while still working on it. Vaughan Williams later observed, "What one
really learns from an Academy or College is not so much from one's
official teachers as from one's fellow-students ... [we discussed] every
subject under the sun from the lowest note of the double bassoon to the
philosophy of Jude the Obscure".[22] In 1949 he wrote of their
relationship, "Holst declared that his music was influenced by that of his
friend: the converse is certainly true."[23]
Vaughan Williams had a modest private income, which in his early

career he supplemented with a variety of musical activities. Although the
organ was not his preferred instrument,[n 6] the only post he ever held
for an annual salary was as a church organist and choirmaster. He held

the position at St Barnabas, in the inner London district of South
Lambeth, from 1895 to 1899 for a salary of £50 a year. He disliked the
job, but working closely with a choir was valuable experience for his
later undertakings.[24]
Vaughan Williams lived in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea from 1905 to 1929
In October 1897 Adeline and Vaughan Williams were married. They

honeymooned for several months in Berlin, where he studied with Max
Bruch.[2]
On their return they settled in London, originally in Westminster
and, from 1905, in Chelsea. There were no children of the marriage.[25]
In 1899 Vaughan Williams passed the examination for the degree of

Doctor of Music at Cambridge; the title was formally conferred on him in
1901.[25][26]The song "Linden Lea" became the first of his works to
appear in print, published in the magazine The Vocalist in April 1902
and then as separate sheet music.[5][27] In addition to composition he
occupied himself in several capacities during the first decade of the

century. He wrote articles for musical journals and for the second edition
of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited the first volume of
Purcell's Welcome Songs for the Purcell Society, and was for a while
involved in adult education in the University Extension Lectures. From
1904 to 1906 he was music editor of a new hymn-book, The English
Hymnal, of which he later said, "I now know that two years of close
association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes
in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas
and fugues".[28] Always committed to music-making for the whole
community, he helped found the amateur Leith Hill Music Festival in

1905, and was appointed its principal conductor, a post he held until
1953.[2]
In 1903–1904 Vaughan Williams started collecting folk-songs. He had

always been interested in them, and now followed the example of a
recent generation of enthusiasts such as Cecil Sharp and Lucy
Broadwood in going into the English countryside noting down and
transcribing songs traditionally sung in various locations.[29] Collections

of the songs were published, preserving many that could otherwise
have vanished as oral traditions died out. Vaughan Williams
incorporated some into his own compositions, and more generally was
influenced by their prevailing modal forms.[30] This, together with his
love of Tudor and Stuart music, helped shape his compositional style for
the rest of his career.[2]
Over this period Vaughan Williams composed steadily, producing

songs, choral music, chamber works and orchestral pieces, gradually
finding the beginnings of his mature style.[31] His compositions included
the tone poem In the Fen Country (1904) and the Norfolk Rhapsody No.
1 (1906).[32] He remained unsatisfied with his technique as a composer.
After unsuccessfully seeking lessons from Sir Edward Elgar,[33]

he
contemplated studying with Vincent d'Indy in Paris. Instead, he was

introduced by the critic and musicologist M. D. Calvocoressi to Maurice
Ravel, a more modernist, less dogmatic musician than d'Indy.[33]

Maurice Ravel in 1906
Ravel took few pupils, and was known as a demanding taskmaster for
those he agreed to teach.[34] Vaughan Williams spent three months in
Paris in the winter of 1907–1908, working with him four or five times
each week.[35] There is little documentation of Vaughan Williams's time
with Ravel; the musicologist Byron Adamsadvises caution in relying on

Vaughan Williams's recollections in the Musical Autobiography written
forty-three years after the event.[36] The degree to which the French
composer influenced the Englishman's style is debated.[37] Ravel
declared Vaughan Williams to be "my only pupil who does not write my
music";[38]nevertheless, commentators including Kennedy, Adams,
Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley find Vaughan Williams's instrumental

textures lighter and sharper in the music written after his return from
Paris, such as the String Quartet in G minor, On Wenlock Edge, the
Overture to The Wasps and A Sea Symphony. [30]
[39] Vaughan Williams
himself said that Ravel had helped him escape from "the heavy
contrapuntal Teutonic manner".[40]
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In the years between his return from Paris in 1908 and the outbreak of
the First World War in 1914, Vaughan Williams increasingly established
himself as a figure in British music. For a rising composer it was
important to receive performances at the big provincial music festivals,
which generated publicity and royalties.[41] In 1910 his music featured at
two of the largest and most prestigious festivals, with the premieres of
the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis at the Three Choirs Festival
in Gloucester Cathedral in September and A Sea Symphony at the
Leeds Festival the following month.[42][43] The leading British music
critics of the time, J. A. Fuller Maitland of The Times and Samuel
Langford of The Manchester Guardian, were strong in their praise. The
former wrote of the fantasia, "The work is wonderful because it seems to
lift one into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling.
Throughout its course one is never sure whether one is listening to
something very old or very new".[42] Langford declared that the
symphony "definitely places a new figure in the first rank of our English
composers".[44][n 7] Between these successes and the start of war
Vaughan Williams's largest-scale work was the first version of A London

Symphony (1914). In the same year he wrote The Lark Ascending in its
original form for violin and piano.[5]
Vaughan Williams in 1913
Despite his age—he was forty-two in 1914—Vaughan Williams

volunteered for military service on the outbreak of the First World War.
Joining the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private, he drove
ambulance wagons in France and later in Greece. Frogley writes of this
period that Vaughan Williams was considerably older than most of his
comrades, and "the back-breaking labour of dangerous night-time
journeys through mud and rain must have been more than usually
punishing".[2]The war left its emotional mark on Vaughan Williams, who
lost many comrades and friends, including the young composer George
Butterworth.[46]
In 1917 Vaughan Williams was commissioned as a
lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, seeing action in France from March

1918. The continual noise of the guns damaged his hearing, and led to
deafness in his later years.[47] After the armistice in 1918 he served as
director of music for the British First Army until demobilised in February
1919.[4]
During the war Vaughan Williams stopped writing music, and after
returning to civilian life he took some time before feeling ready to
compose new works. He revised some earlier pieces, and turned his
attention to other musical activities. In 1919 he accepted an invitation
from Hugh Allen, who had succeeded Parry as director, to teach
composition at the RCM; he remained on the faculty of the college for
the next twenty years.[48][n 8] In 1921 he succeeded Allen as conductor
of the Bach Choir, London. It was not until 1922 that he produced a
major new composition, A Pastoral Symphony; the work was given its
first performance in London in May conducted by Adrian Boult and its
American premiere in New York in December conducted by the
composer.[51]
Vaughan Williams in 1922
Throughout the 1920s Vaughan Williams continued to compose,

conduct and teach. Kennedy lists forty works premiered during the
decade, including the Mass in G minor (1922), the ballet Old King Cole
(1923), the operas Hugh the Drover and Sir John in Love (1924 and
1928), the suite Flos Campi (1925) and the oratorio Sancta Civitas
(1925).[52]
During the decade Adeline became increasingly immobilised by arthritis,

and the numerous stairs in their London house finally caused the
Vaughan Williamses to move in 1929 to a more manageable home,
"The White Gates", Dorking, where they lived until Adeline's death in
1951. Vaughan Williams, who thought of himself as a complete
Londoner, was sorry to leave the capital, but his wife was anxious to live
in the country, and Dorking was within reasonably convenient reach of
town.[53]
In 1932 Vaughan Williams was elected president of the English Folk

Dance and Song Society. From September to December of that year he
was in the US as a visiting lecturer at Bryn Mawr College,
Pennsylvania.[5] The texts of his lectures were published under the title
National Music in 1934; they sum up his artistic and social credo more
fully than anything he had published previously, and remained in print
for most of the remainder of the century.[2]
During the 1930s Vaughan Williams came to be regarded as a leading

figure in British music, particularly after the deaths of Elgar, Delius and
Holst in 1934.[54]Holst's death was a severe personal and professional
blow to Vaughan Williams; the two had been each other's closest
friends and musical advisers since their college days. After Holst's death
Vaughan Williams was glad of the advice and support of other friends
including Boult and the composer Gerald Finzi,[55]

but his relationship
with Holst was irreplaceable.[56]
In some of Vaughan Williams's music of the 1930s there is an explicitly

dark, even violent tone. The ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930)
and the Fourth Symphony (1935) surprised the public and critics.[30]
The discordant and violent tone of the symphony, written at a time of

growing international tension, led many critics to suppose the symphony
to be programmatic. Hubert Fossdubbed it "The Romantic" and Frank
Howes called it "The Fascist".[57] The composer dismissed such
interpretations, and insisted that the work was absolute music, with no
programme of any kind; nonetheless, some of those close to him,
including Foss and Boult, remained convinced that something of the
troubled spirit of the age was captured in the work.[57][n 9]
As the decade progressed, Vaughan Williams found musical inspiration

lacking, and experienced his first fallow period since his wartime
musical silence. After his anti-war cantata Dona nobis pacem in 1936 he
did not complete another work of substantial length until late in 1941,
when the first version of the Fifth Symphony was completed.[2]
In 1938 Vaughan Williams met Ursula Wood (1911–2007), the wife of

an army officer, Captain (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Michael Forrester
Wood.[59] She was a poet, and had approached the composer with a
proposed scenario for a ballet. Despite their both being married, and a
four-decade age-gap, they fell in love almost from their first meeting;
they maintained a secret love affair for more than a decade.[60] Ursula
became the composer's muse, helper and London companion, and later
helped him care for his ailing wife. Whether Adeline knew, or suspected,
that Ursula and Vaughan Williams were lovers is uncertain, but the
relations between the two women were of warm friendship throughout
the years they knew each other. The composer's concern for his first
wife never faltered, according to Ursula, who admitted in the 1980s that
she had been jealous of Adeline, whose place in Vaughan Williams's life
and affections was unchallengeable.[60]
During the Second World War Vaughan Williams was active in civilian
war work, chairing the Home Office Committee for the Release of
Interned Alien Musicians, helping Myra Hess with the organisation of the
daily National Gallery concerts, serving on a committee for refugees
from Nazi oppression, and on the Council for the Encouragement of
Music and the Arts (CEMA), the forerunner of the Arts Council.[5]
In
1940 he composed his first film score, for the propaganda film 49th
Parallel. [61]

In 1942 Michael Wood died suddenly of heart failure. At Adeline's

behest the widowed Ursula was invited to stay with the Vaughan
Williamses in Dorking, and thereafter was a regular visitor there,
sometimes staying for weeks at a time. The critic Michael White
suggests that Adeline "appears, in the most amicable way, to have
adopted Ursula as her successor".[62] Ursula recorded that during air
raids all three slept in the same room in adjacent beds, holding hands
for comfort.[62]
In 1943 Vaughan Williams conducted the premiere of his Fifth

Symphony at the Proms. Its serene tone contrasted with the stormy
Fourth, and led some commentators to think it a symphonic valediction.
William Glock wrote that it was "like the work of a distinguished poet
who has nothing very new to say, but says it in exquisitely flowing
language".[63] The music Vaughan Williams wrote for the BBC to
celebrate the end of the war, Thanksgiving for Victory, was marked by
what the critic Edward Lockspeiser called the composer's characteristic
avoidance of "any suggestion of rhetorical pompousness".[64] Any
suspicion that the septuagenarian composer had settled into benign

tranquillity was dispelled by his Sixth Symphony (1948), described by
the critic Gwyn Parry-Jones as "one of the most disturbing musical
statements of the 20th century", opening with a "primal scream,
plunging the listener immediately into a world of aggression and
impending chaos."[65]Coming as it did near the start of the Cold War,
many critics thought its pianissimo last movement a depiction of a
nuclear-scorched wasteland.[66] The composer was dismissive of
programmatic theories: "It never seems to occur to people that a man
might just want to write a piece of music."[67]

The Pilgrim's Progress – inspiration to Vaughan Williams across forty-five
years
In 1951 Adeline died, aged eighty.[68] In the same year Vaughan
Williams's last opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, was staged at Covent

Garden as part of the Festival of Britain. He had been working
intermittently on a musical treatment of John Bunyan's allegory for
forty-five years, and the 1951 "morality" was the final result. The reviews
were respectful,[69] but the work did not catch the opera-going public's
imagination, and the Royal Opera House's production was "insultingly
half-hearted" according to Frogley.[2] The piece was revived the
following year, but was still not a great success. Vaughan Williams
commented to Ursula, "They don't like it, they won't like it, they don't
want an opera with no heroine and no love duets—and I don't care, it's
what I meant, and there it is."[70]
In February 1953 Vaughan Williams and Ursula were married.[n 10] He
left the Dorking house and they took a lease of 10 Hanover Terrace,
Regent's Park, London. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth II's
coronation; Vaughan Williams's contribution was an arrangement of the
Old Hundredth psalm tune, and a new setting of "O taste and see" from
Psalm 34, performed at the service in Westminster Abbey.[71]

Vaughan Williams signing the guest book at Yale University in 1954
Having returned to live in London, Vaughan Williams, with Ursula's

encouragement, became much more active socially and in pro bono
publico activities. He was a leading figure in the Society for the
Promotion of New Music,[72]

and in 1954 he set up and endowed the
Vaughan Williams Trust to support young composers and promote new
or neglected music.[73] He and his wife travelled extensively in Europe,
and in 1954 he visited the US once again, having been invited to lecture
at Cornell and other universities and to conduct. He received an
enthusiastic welcome from large audiences, and was overwhelmed at
the warmth of his reception.[74] Kennedy describes it as "like a musical
state occasion".[75]
Of Vaughan Williams's works from the 1950s, Grove makes particular

mention of Three Shakespeare Songs (1951) for unaccompanied
chorus, the Christmas cantata Hodie (1953–1954), the Violin Sonata,
and, most particularly, the Ten Blake Songs (1957) for voice and oboe,
"a masterpiece of economy and precision".[30] Unfinished works from

the decade were a cello concerto and a new opera, Thomas the
Rhymer.[76]
The predominant works of the 1950s were his three last
symphonies. The seventh—officially unnumbered, and titled Sinfonia

divided opinion; the score is a reworking of music Vaughan
antartica—
Williams had written for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic, and some
critics thought it not truly symphonic.[30] The Eighth, though wistful in
parts, is predominantly lighthearted in tone; it was received

enthusiastically at its premiere in 1956, given by the Hallé Orchestra
under the dedicatee, Sir John Barbirolli.[77]

The Ninth, premiered at a
Royal Philharmonic Society concert conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent

in April 1958, puzzled critics with its sombre, questing tone, and did not
immediately achieve the recognition it later gained.[30]
Having been in excellent health, Vaughan Williams died suddenly in the
early hours of 26 August 1958 at Hanover Terrace, aged 85.[78] Two
days later, after a private funeral at Golders Green, he was cremated.

On 19 September, at a crowded memorial service, his ashes were
interred near the burial plots of Purcell and Stanford in the north choir
aisle of Westminster Abbey.[79][80]
See also: List of compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and V

aughan
Williams and English Folk Music
Opening of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, 1910
Michael Kennedy characterises Vaughan Williams's music as a strongly

individual blending of the modal harmonies familiar from folk-song with
the French influence of Ravel and Debussy. The basis of his work is
melody, his rhythms, in Kennedy's view, being unsubtle at
times.[81]Vaughan Williams's music is often described as visionary;[n 11]
Kennedy cites the masque Job and the Fifth and Ninth
Symphonies.[81]Vaughan Williams's output was prolific and

wide-ranging. For the voice he composed songs, operas, and choral
works ranging from simpler pieces suitable for amateurs to demanding
works for professional choruses. His comparatively few chamber works
are not among his better known compositions.[88] Some of his finest
works elude conventional categorisation, such as the Serenade to

Music (1938) for sixteen solo singers and orchestra; Flos Campi (1925)
for solo viola, small orchestra, and small chorus; and his most important
chamber work, in Howes's view—not purely instrumental but a song
cycle—On Wenlock Edge (1909) with accompaniment for string quartet
and piano.[4]
In 1955 the authors of The Record Guide, Edward Sackville-West and

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, wrote that Vaughan Williams's music showed
an exceptionally strong individual voice: Vaughan Williams's style is "not
remarkable for grace or politeness or inventive colour", but expresses "a
consistent vision in which thought and feeling and their equivalent
images in music never fall below a certain high level of natural
distinction". They commented that the composer's vision is expressed in
two main contrasting moods: "the one contemplative and trance-like, the
other pugnacious and sinister". The first mood, generally predominant in
the composer's output, was more popular, as audiences preferred "the
stained-glass beauty of the Tallis Fantasia, the direct melodic appeal of
the Serenade to Music, the pastoral poetry of The Lark Ascending, and
the grave serenity of the Fifth Symphony". By contrast, as in the ferocity
of the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies and the Concerto for Two Pianos:
"in his grimmer moods Vaughan Williams can be as frightening as
Sibelius and Bartók".[89]
It is as a symphonist that Vaughan Williams is best known.[4] The
composer and academic Elliott Schwartz wrote (1964), "It may be said
with truth that Vaughan Williams, Sibelius and Prokofieff are the
symphonists of this century".[90] Although Vaughan Williams did not
complete the first of them until he was thirty-eight years old, the nine
symphonies span nearly half a century of his creative life. In his 1964
analysis of the nine, Schwartz found it striking that no two of the
symphonies are alike, either in structure or in mood.[91] Commentators
have found it useful to consider the nine in three groups of three—early,
middle and late.[92]
Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony Internet Archive
Vaughan Williams in 1919, by William Rothenstein
The first three symphonies, to which Vaughan Williams assigned titles
rather than numbers,[n 12] form a sub-group within the nine, having
programmatic elements, absent from the later six.[92]
A Sea Symphony (1910), the only one of the series to include a part for
full choir, differs from most earlier choral symphonies in that the choir
sings in all the movements.[4][94] The extent to which it is a true
symphony has been debated; in a 2013 study, Alain Frogley describes it
as a hybrid work, with elements of symphony, oratorio and cantata.[94]
Its sheer length—about eighty minutes—was unprecedented for an

English symphonic work, and within its thoroughly tonal construction it
contains harmonic dissonances that pre-echo the early works of
Stravinsky which were soon to follow.[95]
A London Symphony (1911–1913) which the composer later observed
might more accurately be called a "symphony by a Londoner",[96] is for
the most part not overtly pictorial in its presentation of London. Vaughan
Williams insisted that it is "self-expressive, and must stand or fall as
'absolute' music".[97] There are some references to the urban
soundscape: brief impressions of street music, with the sound of the

barrel organ mimicked by the orchestra; the characteristic chant of the
lavender-seller; the jingle of hansom cabs; and the chimes of Big Ben
played by harp and clarinet.[98] But commentators have heard—and the
composer never denied or confirmed—some social comment in sinister

echoes at the end of the scherzo and an orchestral outburst of pain and
despair at the opening of the finale.[99] Schwartz comments that the
symphony, in its "unified presentation of widely heterogeneous
elements", is "very much like the city itself".[100] Vaughan Williams said
in his later years that this was his favourite of the symphonies.[n 13]
The last of the first group is A Pastoral Symphony (1921). The first three
movements are for orchestra alone; a wordless solo soprano or tenor
voice is added in the finale. Despite the title the symphony draws little
on the folk-songs beloved of the composer, and the pastoral landscape
evoked is not a tranquil English scene, but the French countryside
ravaged by war.[102] Some English musicians who had not fought in the
First World War misunderstood the work and heard only the slow tempi
and quiet tone, failing to notice the character of a requiem in the music
and mistaking the piece for a rustic idyll.[n 14] Kennedy comments that it
was not until after the Second World War that "the spectral 'Last Post' in
the second movement and the girl's lamenting voice in the finale" were
widely noticed and understood.[103]
The middle three symphonies are purely orchestral, and generally

conventional in form, with sonata form (modified in places), specified
home keys, and four-movement structure.[104] The orchestral forces
required are not large by the standards of the first half of the 20th
century, although the Fourth calls for an augmented woodwind section
and the Sixth includes a part for tenor saxophone.[105]

The Fourth
Symphony (1935) astonished listeners with its striking dissonance, far
removed from the prevailing quiet tone of the previous symphony.[106]
The composer firmly contradicted any notions that the work was
programmatical in any respect, and Kennedy calls attempts to give the
work "a meretricious programme ... a poor compliment to its musical
vitality and self-sufficiency".[107]
The Fifth Symphony (1943) was in complete contrast to its predecessor.

Vaughan Williams had been working on and off for many years on his
operatic version of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Fearing—wrongly
as it turned out—that the opera would never be completed, Vaughan
Williams reworked some of the music already written for it into a new
symphony. Despite the internal tensions caused by the deliberate
conflict of modality in places, the work is generally serene in character,
and was particularly well received for the comfort it gave at a time of
all-out war.[108]Neville Cardus later wrote, "The Fifth Symphony contains
the most benedictory and consoling music of our time."[109]

With the Sixth Symphony (1948) Vaughan Williams once again
confounded expectations. Many had seen the Fifth, composed when he
was seventy, as a valedictory work, and the turbulent, troubled Sixth
came as a shock. After violent orchestral clashes in the first movement,
the obsessive ostinato of the second and the "diabolic" scherzo, the
finale perplexed many listeners. Described as "one of the strangest
journeys ever undertaken in music",[110] it is marked pianissimo
throughout its 10–12-minute duration.[n 15]
The seventh symphony, the Sinfonia antartica (1952), a by-product of

the composer's score for Scott of the Antarctic, has consistently divided
critical opinion on whether it can be properly classed as a
symphony.[111] Alain Frogley in Grove argues that though the work can
make a deep impression on the listener, it is neither a true symphony in

the understood sense of the term nor a tone poem and is consequently
the least successful of the mature symphonies. The work is in five
movements, with wordless vocal lines for female chorus and solo
soprano in the first and last movements.[30] In addition to large
woodwind and percussion sections the score features a prominent part
for wind machine.[112]

The Eighth Symphony (1956) in D minor is noticeably different from its

seven predecessors by virtue of its brevity and, despite its minor key, its
general light-heartedness. The orchestra is smaller than for most of the
symphonies, with the exception of the percussion section, which is
particularly large, with, as Vaughan Williams put it, "all the 'phones' and
'spiels' known to the composer".[113]The work was enthusiastically
received at its early performances, and has remained among Vaughan
Williams's most popular works.[113][114]

The final symphony, the Ninth, was completed in late 1957 and
premiered in April 1958, four months before the composer's death. It is
scored for a large orchestra, including three saxophones, a flugelhorn,
and an enlarged percussion section. The mood is more sombre than
that of the Eighth; Grove calls its mood "at once heroic and
contemplative, defiant and wistfully absorbed".[30] The work received an
ovation at its premiere,[115] but at first the critics were not sure what to
make of it, and it took some years for it to be generally ranked alongside
its eight predecessors.[116]
Ronald Braunstein conducting Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme
by Thomas Tallis at the Internet Archive
Grove lists more than thirty works by Vaughan Williams for orchestra or
band over and above the symphonies. They include two of his most
popular works—the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910,
revised 1919), and The Lark Ascending, originally for violin and piano
(1914); orchestrated 1920.[117] Other works that survive in the repertoire
in Britain are the Norfolk Rhapsody No 1 (1905–1906), The Wasps,

Aristophanic suite—particularly the overture (1909), the English Folk
Song Suite (1923) and the Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934).[30]
Vaughan Williams wrote four concertos: for violin (1925), piano (1926),
oboe (1944) and tuba (1954); another concertante piece is his Romance
for harmonica, strings and piano (1951).[30] None of these works has
rivalled the popularity of the symphonies or the short orchestral works
mentioned above.[n 16] Bartók was among the admirers of the Piano
Concerto, written for and championed by Harriet Cohen, but it has

remained, in the words of the critic Andrew Achenbach, a neglected
masterpiece.[119]
In addition to the music for Scott of the Antarctic, Vaughan Williams
composed incidental music for eleven other films, from 49th Parallel
(1941) to The Vision of William Blake (1957).[30]
By comparison with his output in other genres, Vaughan Williams's

music for chamber ensembles and solo instruments forms a small part
of his oeuvre. Grove lists twenty-four pieces under the heading
"Chamber and instrumental"; three are early, unpublished works.[30]
Vaughan Williams, like most leading British 20th-century composers,
was not drawn to the solo piano and wrote little for it.[n 17] From his
mature years, there survive for standard chamber groupings two string
quartets (1908–1909, revised 1921; and 1943–1944), a "phantasy"
string quintet (1912), and a sonata for violin and piano (1954). The first
quartet was written soon after Vaughan Williams's studies in Paris with
Ravel, whose influence is strongly evident.[n 18] In 2002 the magazine
escribed the second quartet as a masterpiece that should

Gramophoned
be, but is not, part of the international chamber repertory.[121] It is from
the same period as the Sixth Symphony, and has something of that
work's severity and anguish.[122] The quintet (1912) was written two
years after the success of the Tallis Fantasia, with which it has elements
in common, both in terms of instrumental layout and the mood of rapt
contemplation.[123] The violin sonata has made little impact.[124]
Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote of her husband's love of literature, and

listed some of his favourite writers and writings:
In addition to his love of poetry, Vaughan Williams's vocal music is

inspired by his lifelong belief that the voice "can be made the medium of
the best and deepest human emotion."[126]
Between the mid-1890s and the late 1950s Vaughan Williams set more
than eighty poems for voice and piano accompaniment. The earliest to
survive is "A Cradle Song", to Coleridge's words, from about 1894.[30]
The songs include many that have entered the repertory, such as
"Linden Lea" (1902), "Silent Noon" (1904) and the song cycles Songs of
Travel (1905 and 1907) and On Wenlock Edge. [127]

To Vaughan
Williams the human voice was "the oldest and greatest of musical
instruments".[128] He described his early songs as "more or less simple
and popular in character",[129] and the musicologist Sophie Fuller
describes this simplicity and popularity as consistent throughout his
career.[130] Many composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
wrote sentimental works for female voice; by contrast, songs by

Vaughan Williams, such as "The Vagabond" from Songs of Travel, to
words by Robert Louis Stevenson, are "a particularly masculine breath
of fresh air" (Fuller), "virile open-air verses" (Kennedy).[131] Some of
Vaughan Williams's later songs are less well known; Fuller singles out
the cycle Three Poems by Walt Whitman, a largely dark work, as too
often overlooked by singers and critics.[132] For some of his songs the
composer expands the accompaniment to include two or more string

instruments in addition to the piano; they include On Wenlock Edge, and
the Chaucer cycle Merciless Beauty (1921), judged by an anonymous
contemporary critic as "surely among the best of modern English
songs".[132]
Statue of Vaughan Williams by William Fawke, Dorking
Despite his agnosticism Vaughan Williams composed many works for

church performance. His two best known hymn tunes, both from c.
1905, are "Down Ampney" to the words "Come Down, O Love Divine",
and "Sine nomine" "For All the Saints".[133] Grove lists a dozen more,
composed between 1905 and 1935. Other church works include a

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (1925), the Mass (1920–1921), a Te Deum
(1928)[30] and the motets O Clap Your Hands(1920), Lord, Thou hast
been our Refuge (1921) and O Taste and See (1953, first performed at
the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II).[134]
Vaughan Williams's choral works for concert performance include

settings of both secular and religious words. The former include Toward
the Unknown Region to words by Whitman (composed 1904–1906),
Five Tudor Portraits, words by John Skelton (1935), and the
Shakespearean Serenade to Music (in its alternative version for chorus
and orchestra, 1938). Choral pieces with religious words include the
oratorio Sancta Civitas (1923–1925) and the Christmas cantata Hodie
(1954). In 1953 the composer said that of his choral works Sancta
Civitas was his favourite.[135] The Dona Nobis Pacem, an impassioned
anti-war cantata (1936) is a combination of both, with words from

Whitman and others juxtaposed with extracts from the Latin mass,
anticipating a similar mixture of sacred and secular text in Britten's War
Requiem twenty-five years later.[136]
Vaughan Williams was wary of conventional labels; his best known

ballet is described on the title page as "a masque for dancing" and only
one of his operatic works is categorised by the composer simply as an
opera. For some of his theatre pieces that could be classed as operas
or ballets, he preferred the terms "masque", "romantic extravaganza",
"play set to music", or "morality".[n 19]
In a 2013 survey of Vaughan Williams's stage works, Eric Saylor writes,

"With the possible exception of Tchaikovsky, no composer's operatic
career was less emblematic of his success elsewhere."[138] Although
Vaughan Williams was a regular opera-goer, enthusiastic and

knowledgeable about works by operatic masters from Mozart to Wagner
and Verdi, his success in the operatic field was at best patchy. There is
widespread agreement among commentators that this was partly due to
the composer's poor choice of librettists for some, though not all, of his
operas.[139] Another problem was his keenness to encourage amateurs
and student groups, which sometimes led to the staging of his operas
with less than professional standards.[138] A further factor was the
composer's expressed preference for "slow, long tableaux", which

tended to reduce dramatic impact, although he believed them essential,
as "music takes a long time to speak—much longer than words by
themselves."[140]
Hugh the Drover, or Love in the Stocks (completed 1919, premiere

1924) has a libretto, by the writer and theatre critic Harold Child, which
was described by The Stage as "replete with folksy, Cotswold village
archetypes".[141] In the view of the critic Richard Traubner the piece is a

cross between traditional ballad opera and the works of Puccini and
Ravel, "with rhapsodic results." The score uses genuine and pastiche
folk songs but ends with a passionate love duet that Traubner considers
has few equals in English opera.[142] Its first performance was by
students at the Royal College of Music, and the work is rarely staged by
major professional companies.[141]
Old King Cole (1923) is a humorous ballet. The score, which makes
liberal use of folk-song melodies, was thought by critics to be strikingly
modern when first heard. Kennedy comments that the music "is not a
major work but it is fun." The piece has not been seen frequently since
its premiere, but was revived in a student production at the RCM in
1937.[143]
On Christmas Night (1926), a masque by Adolph Bolm and Vaughan

Williams, combines singing, dancing and mime. The story is loosely
based on Dickens's A Christmas Carol. [144]

The piece was first given in
Chicago by Bolm's company; the London premiere was in 1935. Saylor

describes the work as a "dramatic hodgepodge" which has not attracted
the interest of later performers.[145]
The only work that the composer designated as an opera is the comedy
Sir John in Love (1924–1928). It is based on Shakespeare's The Merry
Wives of Windsor. Folk song is used, though more discreetly than in
Hugh the Drover, and the score is described by Saylor as "ravishingly
tuneful".[146] Although versions of the play had already been set by
Nicolai, Verdi, and Holst, Vaughan Williams's is distinctive for its greater
emphasis on the love music rather than on the robust comedy.[147] In
1931, with the Leith Hill Festival in mind, the composer recast some of
the music as a five-section cantata, In Windsor Forest, giving the public
"the plums and no cake", as he put it.[148]

The Poisoned Kiss (1927–1929, premiered in 1936) is a light comedy.
Vaughan Williams knew the Savoy operas well,[149] and his music for
this piece was and is widely regarded as in the Sullivanvein.[150] The
words, by an inexperienced librettist, were judged to fall far short of
Gilbert's standards.[151] Saylor sums up the critical consensus that the
work is something between "a frothy romantic comedy [and] a satirical
fairy-tale", and not quite successful in either category.[152]
William Blake's engraving of Job and his comforters
Job: A Masque for Dancing (1930) was the first large-scale ballet by a
modern British composer.[153] Vaughan Williams's liking for long
tableaux, however disadvantageous in his operas, worked to successful

effect in this ballet. The work is inspired by William Blake's Illustrations
of the Book of Job (1826). The score is divided into nine sections and
an epilogue, presenting dance interpretations of some of Blake's
engravings.[154] The work, choreographed by Ninette de Valois, made a
powerful impression at its early stagings, and has been revived by the
Royal Ballet several times.[145][155] Kennedy ranks the score as "one of
Vaughan Williams's mightiest achievements", and notes that it is familiar

in concert programmes, having "the stature and cohesion of a
symphony."[156]
In Kennedy's view the one-act Riders to the Sea (1925–1931, premiered

1937) is artistically Vaughan Williams's most successful opera; Saylor
names Sir John in Love for that distinction, but rates Riders to the Sea
as one of the composer's finest works in any genre.[157] It is an almost
verbatim setting of J. M. Synge's 1902 play of the same name, depicting
family tragedy in an Irish fishing village. Kennedy describes the score as
"organized almost symphonically" with much of the thematic material
developed from the brief prelude. The orchestration is subtle, and
foreshadows the ghostly finale of the Sixth Symphony; there are also
pre-echoes of the Sinfonia antartica in the lamenting voices of the
women and in the sound of the sea.[158]
The Bridal Day (1938–1939) is a masque, to a scenario by Ursula,

combining voice, mime and dance, first performed in 1953 on BBC
television. Vaughan Williams later recast it a cantata, Epithalamion
(1957).[159]
The Pilgrim's Progress (1951), the composer's last opera, was the
culmination of more than forty years' intermittent work on the theme of
Bunyan's religious allegory. Vaughan Williams had written incidental
music for an amateur dramatisation in 1906, and had returned to the
theme in 1921 with the one-act The Shepherds of the Delectable
Mountains (finally incorporated, with amendments, into the 1951 opera).
The work has been criticised for a preponderance of slow music and
stretches lacking in dramatic action,[160] but some commentators
believe the work to be one of Vaughan Williams's supreme
achievements.[30] Summaries of the music vary from "beautiful, if
something of a stylistic jumble" (Saylor) to "a synthesis of Vaughan

Williams's stylistic progress over the years, from the pastoral mediation
of the 1920s to the angry music of the middle symphonies and
eventually the more experimental phase of the Sinfonia antartica in his
last decade" (Kennedy).[160][161]
Vaughan Williams conducted a handful of recordings for gramophone

and radio. His studio recordings are the overture to The Wasps, and the
ballet Old King Cole (both made in 1925),[162] Dona Nobis Pacem
(1936),[163] and the Fourth Symphony (1937).[162] Live concert tapings
include the Serenade to Music,[164]

and the Fifth Symphony,[163]
recorded in 1951 and 1952, respectively. There is a recording of

Vaughan Williams conducting the St Matthew Passion with his Leith Hill
Festival forces.[165] In the early days of LP in the 1950s Vaughan
Williams was better represented in the record catalogues than most

British composers. The Record Guide (1955) contained nine pages of
listings of his music on disc, compared with five for Walton, and four
apiece for Elgar and Britten.[166]
All the composer's major works and many of the minor ones have been
recorded.[167] There have been numerous complete LP and CD sets of
the nine symphonies, beginning with Boult's Deccacycle of the 1950s,
most of which was recorded in the composer's presence.[168][n 20]
Although rarely staged, the operas have fared well on disc. The earliest
recording of a Vaughan Williams opera was Hugh the Drover, in an
abridged version conducted by Sargent in 1924.[172] Since the 1960s

there have been stereophonic recordings of Hugh the Drover, Sir John
in Love, Riders to the Sea, The Poisoned Kiss, and The Pilgrim's
Progress.[173]
Most of the orchestral recordings have been by British
orchestras and conductors, but notable non-British conductors who

have made recordings of Vaughan Williams's works include Herbert von
Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski,[174]

and, most
frequently, André Previn, who conducted the London Symphony

Orchestra in the first complete stereo cycle of the symphonies, recorded
between 1967 and 1972.[175] Among the British conductors most closely
associated with Vaughan Williams's music on disc and in concert in the

generations after Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli are Vernon Handley,
Richard Hickox, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Andrew Davis.[176]

Record
companies with extensive lists of Vaughan Williams recordings include
EMI, Decca, Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos.[167]

Vaughan Williams refused a knighthood at least once, and declined the
post of Master of the King's Music after Elgar's death.[177] The one state
honour he accepted was the Order of Merit in 1935, which confers no
prenominal title: he preferred to remain "Dr Vaughan Williams".[178] His
academic and musical honours included an honorary doctorate of music

from the University of Oxford(1919); the Cobbett medal for services to
chamber music (1930); the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic
Society (1930); the Collard life fellowship of the Worshipful Company of
Musicians (1934, in succession to Elgar); an honorary fellowship of
Trinity College, Cambridge (1935); the Shakespeare prize of the
University of Hamburg (1937); the Albert medal of the Royal Society of
Arts(1955); and the Howland memorial prize of Yale University
(1954).[2][25]
At the time of his death Vaughan Williams was President of the English
Folk Dance and Song Society, who renamed their library the Vaughan
Williams Memorial Library in his honour.[179]
After Vaughan Williams's death, The Times summed up his legacy in a

leading article:
Bust of Vaughan Williams by Marcus Cornish, Chelsea
The Royal College of Music commissioned an official portrait of the

composer from Sir Gerald Kelly (1952) which hangs in the college. The
Manchester Art Galleryhas a bronze sculpture of Vaughan Williams by
Epstein (1952) and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has drawings by
Joyce Finzi (1947) and Juliet Pannett(1957 and 1958); versions of a
bronze head of the composer by David McFall (1956) are in the NPG
and at the entrance to the Music reading room of the British
Library.[2]
[181] There is a statue of Vaughan Williams in Dorking,[182] and
a bust in Chelsea Embankment Gardens, near his old house in Cheyne
Walk.[183]
In 1994 a group of enthusiasts founded the Ralph Vaughan Williams

Society, with the composer's widow as its president and Roy Douglas
and Michael Kennedy as vice presidents. The society, a registered
charity,[184]
has sponsored and encouraged performances of the
composer's works including complete symphony cycles and a Vaughan

Williams opera festival. The society has promoted premieres of
neglected works, and has its own record label, Albion Records.[185]
Composers of the generation after Vaughan Williams reacted against

his style, which became unfashionable in influential musical circles in
the 1960s; diatonicand melodic music such as his was neglected in
favour of atonal and other modernist compositions.[186] In the 21st
century this neglect has been reversed. In the fiftieth anniversary year of
his death two contrasting documentary films were released: Tony
Palmer's O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Vaughan Williams and John
Bridcut's The Passions of Vaughan Williams.[187]

British audiences were
prompted to reappraise the composer. The popularity of his most

accessible works, particularly the Tallis Fantasia and The Lark
Ascending increased,[n 21] but a wide public also became aware of what
a reviewer of Bridcut's film called "a genius driven by emotion".[189]
Among the 21st-century musicians who have acknowledged Vaughan

Williams's influence on their development are John Adams, PJ Harvey,
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Anthony Payne, Wayne Shorter, Neil Tennant
and Mark-Anthony Turnage.[190]

The Clements Park development, located in Warley, Brentwood, Essex,

has roads taking their names after the composer and his works, the
most obvious being the main road "Vaughan Williams Way" which runs
through the development. Vaughan Williams lectured in Brentwood on
folk music, and collected 140 songs from villages in the region.[191]
● ^ Vaughan Williams insisted on the traditional English

pronunciation of his first name: "Rafe" ([ɹeɪf]); Ursula Vaughan
Williams said that he was infuriated if people pronounced it in
any other way.[1]
● ^ His siblings were Hervey (1869–1944) and Margaret (Meggie,
1870–1931).[3]
● ^ Margaret's father was Josiah Wedgwood III, grandson of the
potter; he married his cousin, Caroline Darwin, sister of Charles
Darwin.[4]
● ^ One of his aunts thought him a "hopelessly bad" musician, but
recognised that "it will simply break his heart if he is told that he
is too bad to hope to make anything of it."[15]
● ^ Vaughan Williams and Adeline had known each other since
childhood. When they became engaged he wrote to his cousin
Ralph Wedgwood, "for many years we have been great friends
and for about the last three I have known my mind on the
matter".[19]
● ^ Vaughan Williams had studied under distinguished organists,
and was given to boasting that he was the only pupil who had
completely baffled Sir Walter Parratt, organist of St George's
aster of the Queen's Music.[15]
Chapel, Windsor and M
● ^ The fantasia made less of an impression on some
lesser-known critics: "G. H." in Musical News thought the work
"of not much musical interest", and the unnamed reviewer in
The Musical Times found it "over-long for concert use".[45]
● ^ His students included Ivor Gurney, Constant Lambert,
Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Gordon Jacob, the
last of whom went on to work with his former teacher,
transcribing the composer's barely-legible manuscripts and
arranging existing pieces for new instrumental combinations.[49]
Later the composer's other regular helper was Roy Douglas,
who worked with Vaughan Williams between 1947 and 1958
and wrote a memoir of working with him.[50]
● ^ Boult recalled that the symphony "brought many of us straight
up against the spectacle of war, and the ghastly possibility of it.
A prophet, like other great men, he foresaw the whole thing."[58]
● ^ There were no children of the marriage.[25]
● ^ The word is used repeatedly in discussions of Vaughan
Williams by composers such as Herbert Howells,[82]
Anthony
Payne,[83]
and Wilfrid Mellers,[84] conductors including Sakari
Oramo,[85]
and scholars such as Byron Adams,[86]Kennedy,[81]
and Hugh Ottaway.[87]
● ^ Vaughan Williams did not assign numbers to any of his
symphonies before No 8, but Nos 4–6 have generally been
referred to by number nevertheless.[93]
● ^ This was in 1951, when the last three symphonies were yet to
be written.[101]
● ^ Peter Warlock commented that the symphony was "like a cow
looking over a gate", though he added, "but after all, it's a very
great work."[83] and Sir Hugh Allen said the work conjured up
"VW rolling over and over in a ploughed field on a wet day".[103]
● ^ In 1956 the composer said in a letter to Michael Kennedy that
the nearest that words could get to what he intended in the
finale were Prospero's in The Tempest: "We are such stuff as
dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a
sleep."[67]
● ^ The 2015 concert listings section of the Ralph Vaughan
Williams Society lists no performances of any of the concertos
in Britain during the year, and, internationally, one performance
of the Oboe Concerto (in Las Palmas) and one of the Piano
Concerto (in Seattle).[118]
● ^ The composer and musical scholar Christopher
Palmerincludes Vaughan Williams in the list of major British
composers, along with Elgar, Delius, Holst, Walton and Britten,
who showed little interest in the solo piano and seldom wrote for
it.[120]
● ^ Vaughan Williams was amused by the comment of a friend
who correctly detected the French influence, but thought "I must
have been having tea with Debussy."[38]
● ^ Applied by the composer to, respectively, On Christmas Night
and The Bridal Day; T
he Poisoned Kiss, Riders to the Sea and
The Pilgrim's Progress.[30]
[137]
● ^ The Ninth Symphony in what became the Decca complete
cycle was recorded by Everest Records;[169]
the sessions took
place on the morning after the composer's death.[170]Decca
licensed the recording from Everest for inclusion in a CD set of
the nine symphonies in 2003.[171]
● ^ The British radio station Classic FM, which specialises in
popular classics, conducted polls of its listeners in 2014 and
2015 in which The Lark Ascending was voted the most popular
of all musical works, and the Tallis Fantasia was in the top
three.[188]
● ^ Vaughan Williams (1964), p. xv
● ^ Jump up to: a b
c d
e f g
h
i j k Frogley, Alain. "Williams, Ralph
Vaughan (1872–1958)", O xford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, retrieved 10 October 2015
(subscription or UK public library membership required)
● ^ Vaughan Williams (1964), pp. 6–7
c d
e f Howes, Frank. "Vaughan Williams,
Ralph (1872–1958)", Dictionary of National Biography Archive,
Oxford University Press, 1971, retrieved 10 October 2015
(subscription or UK public library membership required)
c d
e f g
h
i De Savage, pp. xvii–xx
● ^ Vaughan Williams (1964) p. 11
● ^ Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 13
Kennedy (1980), p. 11
● ^ Kennedy (1980), pp. 12–13; and Vaughan Williams (1964),
pp. 25–27
Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 29
● ^ Kennedy (1980), p. 43
● ^ Foreman, p. 38
Adams (2013), p. 31
● ^ Cobbe, p. 8
● ^ Kennedy (1980), pp. 37–38
● ^ Cobbe, p. 9
● ^ Cobbe, p. 14
● ^ Kennedy (1980), p. 19
● ^ Dibble, p. 268; and Kennedy (1980), p. 19
● ^ Moore, p. 26
● ^ Vaughan Williams, Ralph. "Holst, Gustav Theodore
(1874–1934)", Dictionary of National Biography Archive, Oxford
University Press, 1949, retrieved 13 October 2015 (subscription
or UK public library membership required)
● ^ Cobbe, p. 10
c d
"Vaughan Williams, Ralph", Who Was
Who, Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 10 October 2015
(subscription required)
● ^ Kennedy (1980), p. 44
● ^ Cobbe, pp. 41–42
● ^ Kennedy (1980), p. 74
● ^ Heaney, Michael. "Sharp, Cecil James (1859–1924)"; and de
Val, Dorothy, "Broadwood, Lucy Etheldred (1858–1929)",
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● ^ Hayes, Malcolm. "Progress at last", The Independent, 31
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● ^ Kennedy (1980), p. 432
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c Kennedy, Michael (ed). "Vaughan Williams,
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● ^ Barbirolli et al, p. 537
Thomson et al, p. 318
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● he Telegraph, 26 April
^ "Visionary genius of the spirit world", T
2006
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● ^ Ottaway, p. 213
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● ^ Kennedy, Michael (1981). Notes to EMI CD CDM 5 65131 2,
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● ^ Kennedy (1997) pp. 427–428
● ^ Kennedy (1980) pp. 421 and 431
Kennedy (1997), p. 428
● ^ Saylor, p. 174
Kennedy (1980), p. 189
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● ^ Culshaw, p. 121
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● ^ Achenbach, Andrew. "Vaughan Williams Complete
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● ^ "Hugh the Drover", WorldCat, retrieved 18 October 2015
● ^ "Vaughan Williams: The Collectors' Edition", WorldCat,
● ^ March et al, pp. 1372 (Karajan), 1378 (Bernstein) and 1381
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● ^ Achenbach, p. 40
● ^ Achenbach, pp. 41 (Hickox) and 45 (Handley); and Kennedy
(2008), p. 39 (Hickox, Elder and Davis)
● ^ Onderdonk, ch 1, p. 19
● ^ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library". vwml.org. Archived
from the original on 12 April 2017. Retrieved 11 April 2017.
● ^ Editorial, "The Role of Vaughan Williams", The Times, 27
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● ^ Stonehouse and Stromberg, p. 257
● ^ "Ralph Vaughan Williams", Dorking Museum, retrieved 19
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● ^ "Plaque: Ralph Vaughan Williams—Bust", London
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● ^ "About the Society" Archived 15 July 2011 at the Wayback
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● ^ Kennedy (1989), p. 200; and Frogley and Thomson, p. 1
● ^ Frogley and Thomson, p. 2
● ^ "Hall of Fame 2014", and "Hall of Fame 2015", Classic FM,
● ^ Morrison, Richard. "Always up for a lark ascending", The
Times, 22 August 2008; Walker, Lynne. "Just Williams—Almost
50 years after his death, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
is finally being celebrated on film. About time too.", The
Independent, 28 November 2007; and "Portrait of a genius
driven by emotion", Western Morning News, 28 November 2007
● ^ Frogley and Thomson, pp. 2–3
● ^ "Brentwood Borough News" ( PDF). No. 122. March 2001. p. 7.
Retrieved 8 December 2018.
● Achenbach, Andrew (August 2008). "Building the ideal RVW
library". Gramophone: 40–45.
● Adams, Byron (1996). "Scripture, Church and culture: biblical texts
in the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams". In Alain Frogley.
Vaughan Williams Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0-521-48031-4.
● Adams, Byron (2013). "Vaughan Williams's musical
apprenticeship". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The
Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19768-7.
● Barbirolli, John; Arthur Bliss; Adrian Boult; Norman Demuth;
George Dyson; Alun Hoddinott; Herbert Howells; Frank Howes;
John Ireland; Michael Kennedy; Steuart Wilson (October 1958).
"Tributes to Vaughan Williams". The Musical Times. 99: 535–539.
JSTOR 937433. (subscription required)
● Cobbe, Hugh (2010) [2008]. Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-958764-3.
● Cox, David (1967). "Ralph Vaughan Williams". In Simpson, Robert.
The Symphony: Elgar to the Present Day. Harmondsworth: Pelican
Books. OCLC 221594461.
● Culshaw, John (1981). Putting the Record Straight. London: Secker
and Warburg. ISBN 978-0-436-11802-9.
● De Savage, Heather (2013). "Chronology". In Alain Frogley and
Aidan Thomson. The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19768-7.
● Dibble, Jeremy (2003). Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and
Musician. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-816383-1.
● Foreman, Lewis (1998). Vaughan Williams in Perspective: Studies
of an English Composer. Ilminster: Albion Press. ISBN
978-0-9528706-1-6.
● Frogley, Alain (2013). "History and geography: the early orchestral
works and first three symphonies". In Alain Frogley and Aidan
Thomson. The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams.
● Frogley, Alain; Aidan Thomson (2013). "Introduction". In Alain
Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The Cambridge Companion to
Vaughan Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. I SBN
978-0-521-19768-7.
● Fuller, Sophie (2013). "The songs and shorter secular choral
works". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The Cambridge
Companion to Vaughan Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-19768-7.
● Horton, Julian (2013). "The later symphonies". In Alain Frogley and
● Hughes, Gervase (1962). Composers of Operetta. London:
Macmillan. OCLC 1828913.
● Kennedy, Michael (1980) [1964]. The Works of Ralph Vaughan
Williams (second ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-315453-7.
● Kennedy, Michael (1989). Portrait of Walton. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816705-1.
● Kennedy, Michael (1997) [1993]. "Ralph Vaughan Williams". In
Amanda Holden. The Penguin Opera Guide. London: Penguin.
ISBN 978-0-14-051385-1.
● Kennedy, Michael (August 2008). "The Vaughan Williams Identity".
Gramophone: 36–39.
● Kennedy, Michael (2013). "Fluctuations in the response to the
music of Ralph Vaughan Williams". In Alain Frogley and Aidan
● Manning, David (2008). Vaughan Williams on Music. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518239-2.
● March, Ivan; Edward Greenfield; Robert Layton; Paul Czajkowski
(2008). The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009.
London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-141-03335-8.
● Mark, Christopher (2013). "Chamber music and works for soloist
with orchestra". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The
● McGuire, Charles Edward (2013). "'An Englishman and a
democrat': Vaughan Williams, large choral works and the English
festival tradition". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The
● McVeagh, Diana (1986). Twentieth-century English Masters.
London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-40242-9.
● Moore, Jerrold Northrop (1992). Vaughan Williams: A Life in
Photographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-816296-4.
● Neighbour, Oliver (August 2008). "Ralph, Adeline, and Ursula
Vaughan Williams: Some Facts and Speculation". Music & Letters.
89 (3): 337–345. doi:10.1093/ml/gcn042. JSTOR 30162996.
● Nichols, Roger (1987). Ravel Remembered. London: Faber and
Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-14986-5.
● Onderdonk, Julian (2013). "1. The composer and society: family,
politics, nation". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The
Cambridge University Press. pp. 9–28. ISBN 978-0-521-19768-7.
● Ottaway, Hugh (July 1957). "Vaughan Williams's Eighth
Symphony". Music & Letters. 38 (3): 213–225.
doi:10.1093/ml/xxxviii.3.213. J STOR 730270. (subscription required)
● Roach, Emma (2002). Gramophone Classical Good CD Guide
2003. Teddington: Gramophone Company. ISBN
978-1-876871-98-7.
● Sackville-West, Edward; Desmond Shawe-Taylor (1955). The
Record Guide. London: Collins. OCLC 474839729.
● Saylor, Eric (2013). "Music for stage and film". In Alain Frogley and
● Schwartz, Elliott (1982) [1964]. The Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan
Williams. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-76137-9.
● Steinberg, Michael (2005). Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-512644-0.
● Stonehouse, Roger; Gerhard Stromberg (2004). The Architecture of
the British Library at St Pancras. London and New York: Spon
Press. ISBN 978-0-419-25120-0.
● Thomson, Aidan (2013). "Becoming a national composer: critical
reception to c.1925". In Alain Frogley and Aidan Thomson. The
● Thomson, Aidan; Peter Maxwell Davies; Piers Hellawell; Nicola
LeFanu; Anthony Payne (2013). "Vaughan Williams and his
successors: composers' forum". In Alain Frogley and Aidan
● Vaughan Williams, Ursula (1964). RVW: A Biography of Ralph
Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-315411-7.
● Vaughan Williams, Ursula (1972–1973). "Ralph Vaughan Williams
and his Choice of Words for Music". Proceedings of the Royal
Musical Association: 81–89. JSTOR 766156. ( subscription required)
● Weltzien, O. Alan (Autumn 1992). "Notes and Lineaments:
Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing and Blake's
Illustrations" . The Musical Quarterly. 76 (3): 301–336.
doi:10.1093/mq/76.3.301. JSTOR 742481. (subscription required)
● Ross, Ryan (2016). Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Research
and Information Guide. New York: Routledge. ISBN
978-1-138-79271-5.
● Ralph Vaughan Williams at Encyclopædia Britannica
● The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
● The Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams
● "Discovering Vaughan Williams". BBC Radio 3.
● Free scores by Ralph Vaughan Williams in the Choral Public
Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
● Free scores by Ralph Vaughan Williams at the International
Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
● Works by Ralph Vaughan Williams at Faded Page (Canada)
● Works by or about Ralph Vaughan Williams at Internet
Archive
● "Archival material relating to Ralph Vaughan Williams". UK
National Archives.
● 1956 audio interview with Vaughan Williams on his editing of
the English Hymnal (from the BBC)
● Vaughan Williams Phantasy Quintet Soundbites and
discussion of work
● Ralph Vaughan Williams on IMDb
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[​Help with translations!

This person's surname is ​Vaughan Williams​, not ​Williams​.

1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include

Vaughan Williams was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral

Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted

Two episodes made notably deep impressions in Vaughan Williams's

1​Life and career

Vaughan Williams was born at ​Down Ampney​, ​Gloucestershire​, the third

(1842–1937).​[2]​[n 2]​ His paternal forebears were of mixed English and

Arthur's father and brother.​[4]​ Margaret Vaughan Williams was a

great-granddaughter of ​Josiah Wedgwood​ and niece of ​Charles

Arthur Vaughan Williams died suddenly in February 1875, and his

behaviour but also liberal social and philosophical opinions.​[6]​ Such

views were consistent with the progressive-minded tradition of both

is equally wonderful either way".​[7]

In 1878, at the age of five, Vaughan Williams began receiving piano

year.​[5]​[8]​ In 1880, when he was eight, he took a correspondence course

in music from ​Edinburgh University​ and passed the associated

In September 1883 he went as a boarder to Field House ​preparatory

the ​public school​ ​Charterhouse​ in January 1887. His academic and

encouraged his musical development.​[10]​ In 1888 he organised a

Piano Trio (now lost) with the composer as violinist.​[5]

While at Charterhouse Vaughan Williams found that religion meant less

cheerful agnosticism",​[11]​ and he continued to attend church regularly to

remained "one of his essential companions through life."​[11]​ In this, as in

many other things in his life, he was, according to his biographer

nonconformist with a conservative regard for the best tradition".​[12]

Hubert Parry​, Vaughan Williams's first composition teacher at the ​Royal

In July 1890 Vaughan Williams left Charterhouse and in September he

idolised Parry,​[13]​ and recalled in his ​Musical Autobiography​ (1950):

Vaughan Williams's family would have preferred him to have remained

university education was expected of him, and in 1892 he temporarily

three years, studying music and history.​[5]

Among those with whom Vaughan Williams became friendly at

the historian ​G. M. Trevelyan​and the musician ​Hugh Allen​.[2]​

intellectually overshadowed by some of his companions, but he learned

the women with whom he mixed socially at Cambridge was Adeline

During his time at Cambridge Vaughan Williams continued his weekly

Bachelor of Arts​ the following year.​[5]​ After leaving the university he

returned to complete his training at the RCM. Parry had by then

Wagner​, and he stood up to his teacher as few students dared to do.​[20]

Beneath Stanford's bluster lay a recognition of Vaughan Williams's

orchestration and extreme predilection for ​modal music​.[21]

philosophy of ​Jude the Obscure​".​[22]​ In 1949 he wrote of their

friend: the converse is certainly true."​[23]

Vaughan Williams had a modest private income, which in his early

for an annual salary was as a church organist and choirmaster. He held

In October 1897 Adeline and Vaughan Williams were married. They

and, from 1905, in ​Chelsea​. There were no children of the marriage.​[25]

In 1899 Vaughan Williams passed the examination for the degree of

1901.​[25]​[26]​The song "Linden Lea" became the first of his works to

appear in print, published in the magazine ​The Vocalist​ in April 1902

and then as separate sheet music.​[5]​[27]​ In addition to composition he

occupied himself in several capacities during the first decade of the

and fugues".​[28]​ Always committed to music-making for the whole

community, he helped found the amateur ​Leith Hill Music Festival​ in

In 1903–1904 Vaughan Williams started collecting folk-songs. He had

transcribing songs traditionally sung in various locations.​[29]​ Collections

influenced by their prevailing modal forms.​[30]​ This, together with his

the rest of his career.​[2]

Over this period Vaughan Williams composed steadily, producing

finding the beginnings of his mature style.​[31]​ His compositions included

1​ (1906).​[32]​ He remained unsatisfied with his technique as a composer.

[Help with translations!

This person's surname is Vaughan Williams, not Williams.

1Life and career

Vaughan Williams was born at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, the third

(1842–1937).[2][n 2] His paternal forebears were of mixed English and

Arthur's father and brother.[4] Margaret Vaughan Williams was a

great-granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood and niece of Charles

behaviour but also liberal social and philosophical opinions.[6] Such

is equally wonderful either way".[7]

year.[5][8] In 1880, when he was eight, he took a correspondence course

in music from Edinburgh University and passed the associated

In September 1883 he went as a boarder to Field House preparatory

the public school Charterhouse in January 1887. His academic and

encouraged his musical development.[10] In 1888 he organised a

Piano Trio (now lost) with the composer as violinist.[5]

cheerful agnosticism",[11] and he continued to attend church regularly to

remained "one of his essential companions through life."[11] In this, as in

nonconformist with a conservative regard for the best tradition".[12]

Hubert Parry, Vaughan Williams's first composition teacher at the Royal

idolised Parry,[13] and recalled in his Musical Autobiography (1950):

three years, studying music and history.[5]

the historian G. M. Trevelyanand the musician Hugh Allen.[2]

Bachelor of Arts the following year.[5] After leaving the university he

Wagner, and he stood up to his teacher as few students dared to do.[20]

orchestration and extreme predilection for modal music.[21]

philosophy of Jude the Obscure".[22] In 1949 he wrote of their

friend: the converse is certainly true."[23]

and, from 1905, in Chelsea. There were no children of the marriage.[25]

1901.[25][26]The song "Linden Lea" became the first of his works to

appear in print, published in the magazine The Vocalist in April 1902

and then as separate sheet music.[5][27] In addition to composition he

and fugues".[28] Always committed to music-making for the whole

community, he helped found the amateur Leith Hill Music Festival in

transcribing songs traditionally sung in various locations.[29] Collections

influenced by their prevailing modal forms.[30] This, together with his

the rest of his career.[2]

finding the beginnings of his mature style.[31] His compositions included

1 (1906).[32] He remained unsatisfied with his technique as a composer.

After unsuccessfully seeking lessons from Sir Edward Elgar,[33]

contemplated studying with Vincent d'Indy in Paris. Instead, he was

Ravel, a more modernist, less dogmatic musician than d'Indy.[33]

those he agreed to teach.[34] Vaughan Williams spent three months in

each week.[35] There is little documentation of Vaughan Williams's time

with Ravel; the musicologist Byron Adamsadvises caution in relying on

composer influenced the Englishman's style is debated.[37] Ravel

music";[38]nevertheless, commentators including Kennedy, Adams,

Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley find Vaughan Williams's instrumental

contrapuntal Teutonic manner".[40]

which generated publicity and royalties.[41] In 1910 his music featured at

Leeds Festival the following month.[42][43] The leading British music

something very old or very new".[42] Langford declared that the

composers".[44][n 7] Between these successes and the start of war

Vaughan Williams's largest-scale work was the first version of A London

original form for violin and piano.[5]

punishing".[2]The war left its emotional mark on Vaughan Williams, who

lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, seeing action in France from March

deafness in his later years.[47] After the armistice in 1918 he served as

the next twenty years.[48][n 8] In 1921 he succeeded Allen as conductor

In 1932 Vaughan Williams was elected president of the English Folk

for most of the remainder of the century.[2]

Holst in 1934.[54]Holst's death was a severe personal and professional

including Boult and the composer Gerald Finzi,[55]

with Holst was irreplaceable.[56]

Howes called it "The Fascist".[57] The composer dismissed such

troubled spirit of the age was captured in the work.[57][n 9]

when the first version of the Fifth Symphony was completed.[2]

In 1938 Vaughan Williams met Ursula Wood (1911–2007), the wife of

and affections was unchallengeable.[60]

language".[63] The music Vaughan Williams wrote for the BBC to

avoidance of "any suggestion of rhetorical pompousness".[64] Any

impending chaos."[65]Coming as it did near the start of the Cold War,

many critics thought its pianissimo last movement a depiction of a

nuclear-scorched wasteland.[66] The composer was dismissive of

might just want to write a piece of music."[67]

In 1951 Adeline died, aged eighty.[68] In the same year Vaughan

Williams's last opera, The Pilgrim's Progress, was staged at Covent

half-hearted" according to Frogley.[2] The piece was revived the

what I meant, and there it is."[70]

In February 1953 Vaughan Williams and Ursula were married.[n 10] He

Psalm 34, performed at the service in Westminster Abbey.[71]