October 12, 1872

Vaughan Williams (October 12, 1872 to August 26, 1958) composed in a variety of popular forms. His music is spoken of as quintessentially English but he of course was schooled in various places. According to his Britannica article:

Vaughan Williams studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in London at the Royal College of Music under two major figures of the late 19th-century renaissance of English music, Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry. In 1897–98 he studied in Berlin under the noted composer Max Bruch and in 1909 in Paris under Maurice Ravel. About 1903 he began to collect folk songs, and in 1904–06 he was musical editor of The English Hymnal, for which he wrote his celebrated “Sine Nomine” (“For All the Saints”). After artillery service in World War I, he became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music.

His compositions reflect his commitment to English traditions

Of his stage works, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1951) and Job (1931), a masque for dancing, reflect his serious, mystical side. Hugh the Drover (1924), a ballad opera, stems from his folk song interest. Riders to the Sea (1937) is a poignant setting of John Millington Synge’s play.

He wrote many songs of great beauty, including On Wenlock Edge (1909), set to poems of A.E. Housman and consisting of a cycle for tenor, string quartet, and piano (later arranged for tenor and orchestra) and Five Mystical Songs(1911), set to poems of George Herbert.

We could summarize Vaughn Williams' nationalism:

Vaughan Williams broke the ties with continental Europe that for two centuries through George Frideric Handel, Felix Mendelssohn, and lesser German composers had made Britain virtually a musical province of Germany. Although his predecessors in the English musical renascence, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry, and Sir Charles Stanford, remained within the Continental tradition, Vaughan Williams, like such nationalist composers as the Russian Modest Mussorgsky, the Czech Bedřich Smetana, and the Spanish Manuel de Falla, turned to folk song as a wellspring of native musical style.

Here is our English composer and his cat, named, folksily, Foxy.



More information is available at the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society , where there is a Biography, List of Works, Concert details, etc., at www.rvwsociety.com