
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan ( )
Williams OM (12
October 1872 – 26 August 1958) was an English
composer of symphonies,
chamber music, opera, choral music, and
film scores.
He was
also a collector of English
folk music and song;
this also influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, which began in 1904, many
folk song arrangements being set as hymn tunes, in addition to
several original compositions.
Life
Early years
Ralph
Vaughan Williams was born on 12 October 1872 in Down Ampney
, Gloucestershire
, where his father, the Rev. Arthur Vaughan
Williams, was vicar. Following his father's death in 1875 he was
taken by his mother, Margaret Susan Wedgwood (1843–1937), the
great-granddaughter of the potter
Josiah
Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, the
Wedgwood family home in the North Downs. He
was also related to the Darwins,
Charles
Darwin being a great-uncle. Though born into the privileged
intellectual
upper middle class,
Vaughan Williams never took it for granted and worked all his life
for the democratic and egalitarian ideals in which he
believed.
As a student he had studied piano, "which I never could play, and
the violin, which was my musical salvation."
After Charterhouse
School
he attended the Royal College of Music
(RCM) under Charles Villiers Stanford.
He read
history and music at
Trinity College,
Cambridge
, where his friends and contemporaries included the
philosophers G. E. Moore and
Bertrand Russell. He then returned to the
RCM and studied composition with
Hubert
Parry, who became a friend. One of his fellow pupils at the RCM
was
Leopold Stokowski and during
1896 they both studied organ under Sir
Walter Parratt.
Stokowski later went
on to perform six of Vaughan Williams's symphonies for American
audiences, making the first recording of the Sixth Symphony in 1949
with the New York Philharmonic, and giving the U.S. premiere of the
Ninth Symphony in
Carnegie
Hall
in 1958.
Another friendship made at the RCM, crucial to Vaughan Williams's
development as a composer, was with fellow-student
Gustav Holst whom he first met in 1895. From
that time onwards they spent several 'field days' reading through
and offering constructive criticism on each other's works in
progress.
Vaughan Williams's composition developed slowly and it was not
until he was 30 that the
song "Linden Lea"
became his first publication. He mixed composition with
conducting, lecturing and editing other music,
notably that of
Henry Purcell and the
English Hymnal.
He had further lessons
with Max Bruch in Berlin in 1897 and later
took a big step forward in his orchestral style when he studied in
Paris
with Maurice
Ravel.
In 1904, Vaughan Williams discovered English
folk songs, which were fast becoming extinct owing
to the oral tradition through which they existed being undermined
by the increase of literacy and
printed
music in rural areas. He travelled the countryside,
transcribing and preserving many himself. Later he incorporated
some songs and melodies into his own music, being fascinated by the
beauty of the music and its anonymous history in the working lives
of ordinary people. His efforts did much to raise appreciation of
traditional English folk song and melody.
Later in his life he
served as president of the English Folk
Dance and Song Society
(EFDSS), which, in recognition of his early and
important work in this field, named its Vaughan
Williams Memorial Library
after him. During this time he strengthened
his links to prominent writers on folk music, including the
Reverend
George B. Chambers.
In 1905,
Vaughan Williams conducted the first concert of the newly founded
Leith Hill Music Festival
at Dorking
which he was
to conduct until 1953, when he passed the baton to his successor,
William Cole.
In 1909, he composed incidental music for the
Cambridge Greek Play, a stage
production at Cambridge University of
Aristophanes' The
Wasps.
The next year, he had his first big public
successes conducting the premieres of the Fantasia on a Theme by
Thomas Tallis (at The Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester
Cathedral
) and his choral
symphony A Sea Symphony
(Symphony No. 1). He enjoyed a still greater success with
A London Symphony
(Symphony No. 2) in 1914, conducted by
Geoffrey Toye.
Two World Wars

A statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in
Dorking.
Vaughan Williams was 41 when
World War I
erupted. Though he could have either avoided war service entirely,
or tried for a commission, he chose to enlist as a private in the
Royal Army Medical Corps.
After a gruelling time as a stretcher bearer, he was commissioned
in the
Royal Garrison
Artillery. On one occasion, though too ill to stand, he
continued to direct his
battery
while lying on the ground. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a
process of hearing loss which eventually caused severe
deafness in old age. In 1918, he was appointed
Director of Music, First Army and this helped him adjust back into
musical life.
After the war, he adopted for a while a somewhat mystical style in
A Pastoral Symphony
(Symphony No. 3), which draws on his experiences as an ambulance
volunteer in that war; and
Flos
Campi, a work for solo
viola, small
orchestra, and wordless chorus. From 1924 a new phase in his music
began, characterized by lively cross-rhythms and clashing
harmonies. Key works from this period are
Toccata
marziale, the
ballet Old
King Cole, the
Piano Concerto, the
oratorio Sancta Civitas (his favourite of his
choral works) and the
ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing,
which is drawn not from the Bible but from
William Blake's
Illustrations
of the Book of Job. He also composed a
Te Deum in
G for the enthronement of
Cosmo Gordon
Lang as
Archbishop of
Canterbury. This period in his music culminated in the
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, first played
by the
BBC Symphony Orchestra
in 1935. This symphony contrasts dramatically with the "pastoral"
orchestral works with which he is associated; indeed, its almost
unrelieved tension, drama, and dissonance have startled listeners
since it was premiered. Acknowledging that the Fourth Symphony was
different, the composer said, "I don't know if I like it, but it's
what I mean." Two years later, Vaughan Williams made a historic
recording of the work with the same orchestra for HMV (His Master's
Voice), his only commercial recording. During this period, he
lectured in America and England, and conducted
The Bach Choir. He was appointed to the
Order of Merit in the
King's Birthday Honours of 1935,
having previously declined a
knighthood.
Vaughan Williams was an intimate life long friend of the famous
British pianist
Harriet Cohen. His
letters to her reveal a flirtatious relationship, regularly
reminding her of the thousands of kisses that she owed him. Before
Cohen's first American tour in 1931 he wrote "I fear the Americans
will love you so much that they won't let you come back." He was a
regular visitor to her home and often attended parties there. Cohen
premiered Vaughan Williams's "Hymn Tune Prelude" in 1930, which he
dedicated to her. She later introduced the piece throughout Europe
during her concert tours. In 1933 she premiered his Piano Concerto
in C major, a work which was once again dedicated to her. Cohen was
given the exclusive right to play the piece for a period of time.
Cohen played and promoted Vaughan Williams's work throughout
Europe, the USSR, and the United States.
His music now entered a mature lyrical phase, as in the
Five
Tudor Portraits; the
Serenade
to Music (a setting of a scene from act five of
The Merchant of
Venice, for orchestra and sixteen vocal soloists and
composed as a tribute to the conductor
Sir Henry Wood); and the
Symphony No. 5 in D, which he conducted
at the
Proms in 1943. As he was now 70,
many people considered it a
swan song, but
he renewed himself again and entered yet another period of
exploratory harmony and instrumentation. His very successful
Symphony No.
6 of 1946 received
a hundred performances in the first year. It surprised both
admirers and critics, many of whom suggested that this symphony
(especially its last movement) was a grim vision of the aftermath
of an atomic war: typically, Vaughan Williams himself refused to
recognise any programme behind this work.
Late harvest
Before his death in 1958, he completed three more symphonies. His
Seventh,
Sinfonia
antartica, which was based on his 1948 film score for
Scott of the
Antarctic, exhibits his renewed interest in
instrumentation and sonority. The
Eighth Symphony, first
performed in 1956, was followed by the much weightier
Symphony No. 9 in E minor of 1956–57.
This last symphony was initially given a lukewarm reception after
its first performance in May 1958, just three months before the
composer's death. But this dark and enigmatic work is now
considered by many to be a fitting conclusion to his sequence of
symphonic works.
He also completed a range of instrumental and choral works,
including a
Tuba Concerto,
An Oxford Elegy on texts of
Matthew Arnold, and the Christmas
cantata Hodie. He also wrote an
arrangement of
The Old One Hundredth Psalm
Tune for the
Coronation Service of
Queen Elizabeth
II. At his death he left an unfinished Cello Concerto, an
opera Thomas the Rhymer and music for
a Christmas play,
The First Nowell, which was completed by
his amanuensis
Roy Douglas (b.
1907).
Despite his substantial involvement in church music, and the
religious subject-matter of many of his works, he was described by
his second wife as "an atheist ... [who] later drifted into a
cheerful agnosticism." It is noteworthy that in his opera
The
Pilgrim's Progress he changed the name of the hero from
John Bunyan's
Christian to
Pilgrim.
He also set Bunyan's hymn Who would true valour see to music
using the traditional Sussex melody "Monk's Gate
". For many church-goers, his most familiar
composition may be the
hymn tune
Sine Nomine written for the
hymn "
For All the
Saints" by
William Walsham
How.
The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn
"Come Down, O Love Divine" (Discendi, Amor santo by
Bianco of Siena, ca.1434) is entitled "Down Ampney
" in honour of his birthplace.
He also
worked as a tutor for Birkbeck College
.
In the 1950s, the composer supervised recordings of all but his
Ninth Symphony by Sir
Adrian Boult and
the
London Philharmonic
Orchestra for
Decca. At the end of
the sessions for the mysterious Sixth Symphony, Vaughan Williams
gave a short speech, thanking Boult and the orchestra for their
performance, "most heartily," and Decca later included this on the
LP. He was to supervise the first recording of the Ninth Symphony
(for
Everest Records) with Boult;
his death on 26 August 1958 the night before the recording sessions
were to begin provoked Boult to announce to the musicians that
their performance would be a memorial to the composer. These
recordings, including the speeches by the composer and Boult, have
all been reissued by Decca on CD.
He is
buried in Westminster
Abbey
.
Vaughan Williams is a central figure in British music because of
his long career as teacher, lecturer and friend to so many younger
composers and conductors. His writings on music remain
thought-provoking, particularly his oft-repeated call for all
persons to make their own music, however simple, as long as it is
truly their own.
Marriages
He was married twice. His first marriage was in 1896 to Adeline
Fisher (daughter of the historian
Herbert William Fisher). She died in
1951 after many years of suffering from crippling
arthritis.
In 1953 he married the poet
Ursula Wood (1911–2007). At this
time they moved from Dorking, Surrey back to London and occupied a
house at 10 Hanover Terrace, Regents Park. She had met Vaughan
Williams in 1938 and they had begun an affair while still married
to their respective spouses. After her first husband's death, Wood
continued her relationship with Vaughan Williams, apparently with
the tacit approval of Adeline. Ursula became Ralph's literary
advisor and personal assistant, writing the
libretto to his choral work
The Sons of
Light, and contributing to that of
The Pilgrim's
Progress and
Hodie. There were no children by either
marriage.
Style
Vaughan Williams's music has often been said to be
characteristically English, in the same way as that of
Gustav Holst,
Frederick Delius,
George Butterworth, and Sir
William Walton. In
Albion: The Origins of
the English Imagination,
Peter
Ackroyd writes, "If that Englishness in music can be
encapsulated in words at all, those words would probably be:
ostensibly familiar and commonplace, yet deep and mystical as well
as lyrical, melodic, melancholic, and nostalgic yet timeless."
Ackroyd quotes music critic
John Alexander Fuller
Maitland, whose distinctions included editing the second
edition of
Grove's Dictionary of
Music and Musicians in the years just before 1911, as
having observed that in Vaughan Williams's style "one is never
quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very
new."
His style expresses a deep regard for and fascination with folk
tunes, the variations upon which can convey the listener from the
down-to-earth (which he always tried to remain in his daily life)
to the ethereal. Simultaneously the music shows patriotism toward
England in the subtlest form, engendered by a feeling for ancient
landscapes and a person's small yet not entirely insignificant
place within them. His earlier works sometimes show the influence
of
Maurice Ravel, his teacher for
three months in Paris in 1908. Ravel described Vaughan Williams as
"the only one of my pupils who does not write my music."
Works
- See also: Compositions by
Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Operas
- *The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1921).
Libretto: Ralph Vaughan Williams (from John
Bunyan) (Later incorporated, save for the final section, into
The Pilgrim's Progress)
Incidental music
Ballets
- Old King Cole (1923)
- On Christmas Night (1926)
- Job: A Masque for
Dancing (1930)
- The Running Set (1933)
- The Bridal Day (1938–39)
Orchestral
Concerti
- Piano
- Violin
- The Lark Ascending
for violin and orchestra (1914)
- Concerto Academico for violin and orchestra
(1924–25)
- Viola
- Flos Campi for viola,
wordless chorus and small orchestra (1925)
- Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra (1936–38)
- Oboe Concerto in A
minor, for oboe and strings (1944)
- Fantasia (quasi variazione) on the Old 104th Psalm
Tune for piano, chorus, and orchestra (1949)
- Romance in D-flat for harmonica and orchestra (1951) (written
for Larry Adler)
- Tuba
Concerto in F minor (1954)
Choral
- Toward the Unknown Region, song for chorus and
orchestra, setting of Walt Whitman
(1906)
- Five Mystical Songs
for baritone, chorus and orchestra, settings of George Herbert (1911)
- Fantasia on Christmas Carols for baritone, chorus, and
orchestra (1912; arranged also for reduced orchestra of organ,
strings, percussion)
- Mass in G
Minor for unaccompanied choir (1922)
- Sancta Civitas (The Holy
City) oratorio, text mainly from the Book of Revelation (1923–25)
- Te Deum in G (1928)
- Benedicite for soprano, chorus, and orchestra
(1929)
- In Windsor Forest, adapted from the opera Sir John in Love (1929)
- Three Choral Hymns (1929)
- Magnificat for contralto, women's chorus, and
orchestra (1932)
- Five Tudor Portraits for contralto, baritone, chorus,
and orchestra (1935)
- Dona nobis
pacem, text by Walt Whitman
and other sources (1936)
- Festival Te Deum for chorus and orchestra or organ
(1937)
- Serenade to Music for
sixteen solo voices and orchestra, a setting of Shakespeare, dedicated to Sir Henry Joseph Wood on the occasion of his
Jubilee (1938)
- A Song of Thanksgiving (originally Thanksgiving
for Victory) for narrator, soprano solo, children's chorus,
mixed chorus, and orchestra (1944)
- An Oxford Elegy for
narrator, mixed chorus and small orchestra (1949)
- Three Shakespeare
Songs for SATB unaccompanied, composed for The British
Federation of Music Festivals National Competitive Festival
(1951)
- Oh Taste and See, a motet setting of Psalm 34:8. The
original SATB version was composed for the Coronation of HM Queen
Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in June 1953. (1953)
- Hodie, a Christmas oratorio
(1954)
- Folk songs of the
Four Seasons for unaccompanied SSA chorus.
- Epithalamion for baritone solo, chorus, flute, piano,
and strings (1957)
- A Choral Flourish for unaccompanied SATB chorus,
composed for a large choral event in the Royal Albert Hall at the
invitation of (and dedicated to) Alan Kirby (c. 1952)
Arrangements of Christian Hymns
Vaughan Williams was the musical editor of the
English Hymnal of 1906, and the co-editor
with
Martin Shaw of
Songs of Praise of 1925 and the
Oxford Book of Carols of 1928,
all in collaboration with
Percy
Dearmer.
- A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing
- All Creatures of Our God and King
- Alleluia, Sing to Jesus
- Amid the Thronging Worshippers
- At the Name of Jesus
- "Come Down, O Love Divine" original
hymnody by Bianco of Siena (1434)"Discendi, Amor
santo"and entitled "Down Ampney
" in honour of Vaughan Williams's
birthplace
- Come, Let Us with Our Lord Arise an Easter anthem
- Come Thou Long Expected Jesus a carol for the season
of Advent
- For All the Saints harmonized from "Sine
Nomine"
- God Be With You Till We Meet Again
- I Love You Lord, My Strength, My Rock
- I Sing the Mighty Power of God
- Jesus, Lord, Redeemer
- "Let All
Mortal Flesh Keep Silence", text of the Cherubic hymn of
Liturgy of St James, harmonized
to the French folk tune Picardy
(1906)
- Make Room Within My Heart, O God
- My
God, My God, O Why Have You Forsaken Me? a lament for
Good Friday services during Passiontide
- O Come to Me, the Master Said
- "O Little Town of
Bethlehem" a popular Christmas Carol penned by the
American Phillips Brooks adapted to
the English tune "Forest Green"
- O Sing a Song of Bethlehem
- On Christmas Night All Christians Sing
- When the Church of Jesus
Vocal
- "Linden Lea", song (1901)
- The House of Life, six sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, set to music
(1904)
- Songs of Travel
(1904)
- "The Sky Above The Roof" (1908)
- On Wenlock Edge, song cycle for tenor, piano and
string quartet (1909)
- Along the Field, for tenor and violin
- Three Poems by Walt
Whitman for baritone and piano (1920)
- Four Poems by Fredegond
Shove: for baritone and piano (1922)
- Four
Hymns (1914)
- Merciless Beauty for tenor, two violins, and
cello
- Four Last
Songs to poems of Ursula Vaughan Williams
- Ten Blake songs, song
cycle for high voice and oboe (1957)
Chamber and Instrumental
- String Quintet in C minor for violin, viola, cello, double bass
and piano (1903)
- String Quartet No. 1 in G minor (1908)
- Phantasy Quintet for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello
(1912)
- Six Studies in English Folk-Song, for violoncello and piano
(1926)
- String Quartet No. 2 in A minor ("For Jean, on her birthday,"
1942–44)
- Sonata in A minor for violin and piano (1952)
- Romance for Viola and Piano (undated)
Organ
- Three Preludes on Welsh Hymn Tunes (Bryn Calfaria, Rhosymedre, Hyfrydol) (1920)
- Prelude and Fugue in C minor (1921)
- A Wedding Tune for Ann (1943)
- The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune, harmonization and
arrangement (1953)
- Two Organ Preludes (The White Rock, St. David's Day)
(1956)
Film, radio, and TV scores
- 49th Parallel, 1940, his
first, talked into it by Muir
Mathieson to assuage his guilt at being able to do nothing for
the war effort
- Coastal Command,
1942
- BBC adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress,
1942
- The People's Land,
1943
- The Story of a
Flemish Farm, 1943
- Stricken Peninsula,
1945
- The Loves of Joanna
Godden, 1946
- Scott of the
Antarctic, 1948, partially reused for his Symphony No. 7 Sinfonia
antartica
- The England of
Elizabeth, 1957
Band
- English Folk Song
Suite for military band (1923)
- Sea Songs (1923)
- Toccata Marziale for
military band (1924)
- Overture: Henry V for brass band (1933/34)
- Flourish for Wind Band (1939)
- Prelude on Three Welsh Hymn Tunes arranged from the
organ piece for brass band (1955) and published by Salvationist
Publishing and Supplies
- Variations for brass band (1957)
A note on recordings
Vaughan Williams enjoys an extensive recorded legacy. Early
recordings of individual symphonies made by
Henry Wood (London),
John Barbirolli (Fifth),
Adrian Boult and
Leopold Stokowski (both in the Sixth), and
the composer's own recording of the Fourth, preceded several
complete cycles. Stokowski's 1943 NBC Symphony broadcast of the 4th
Symphony has also been issued on CD, as has his 1964 Proms
performance of the 8th with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Sir Eugene
Goossens recorded the 1920 edition of
A London Symphony with the Cincinnati
Orchestra for RCA Victor in 1941, the only recording of that
version of the score ever made. Boult taped the first cycle
(Symphonies 1 - 8) for
Decca in the
early 1950s, completing it with No. 9 for the Everest label in
1958; he re-recorded all nine for
EMI between
1967 and 1972. Other cycles have followed from
André Previn,
Bernard Haitink,
Bryden Thomson,
Vernon Handley,
Leonard Slatkin and
Richard Hickox.
Several other foreign conductors have also recorded individual
Vaughan Williams symphonies:
Dimitri
Mitropoulos and
Leonard
Bernstein both recorded the 4th Symphony with the New York
Philharmonic, the same orchestra with which
Leopold Stokowski had made the first
recording of the 6th Symphony in 1949. This work was also recorded
by
Maurice Abravanel and the Utah
Symphony in 1966.
Paavo Berglund also
recorded the 4th and 6th Symphonies and, among other CD releases,
the Portuguese Premiere of the 9th Symphony, with
Pedro de Freitas Branco conducting
the National Symphony Orchestra of Portugal, has also been issued.
Similarly, the US Premiere of the 9th Symphony, given by
Leopold Stokowski in Carnegie Hall in 1958
'In Memoriam Vaughan Williams' has also been released on CD by Cala
Records.
A first official release of the
Symphony No. 5 conducted by the
composer in 1952 was recently issued in the U.K. by Somm
Recordings.
David Willcocks recorded much of the choral output for
EMI in the 1960s and 1970s. Award-winning performances
of the string quartets have followed on
Naxos,
which along with the
Hyperion and
Chandos labels have recorded much
neglected material, including works for brass band and the rarely
performed operas.
EMI Classics has issued a budget 30-CD set (34+ hours) with
virtually all of Vaughan Williams's works, including alternative
settings.
References
- Vaughan Williams on Music, Ralph Vaughan Williams
& David Manning. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN
9780195182392
- Heirs & Rebels, Ralph Vaughan Williams &
Gustav Holst; ed. Ursula Vaughan Williams & Imogen Holst.
London, Oxford University Press, 1959.
- Vaughan Williams, Simon Heffer. Northeastern; First
American edition (March 1, 2001). ISBN 9781555534721.
Notes
- Vaughan Williams, Ursula. (1964) R.V.W. A Biography of
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Oxford University Press. The preface,
Notes on Names, says "Ralph's name was pronounced Rayf,
any other pronunciation used to infuriate him."
- Heirs and Rebels by Ralph Vaughan Williams & Gustav Holst;
Preface, pix
- Vaughan Williams, Ursula, RVW A Biography of Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Oxford University Press 1964 p. 130
- Journal of the Vaughan Williams Society, No. 39, June 2007
- Hugh Ottaway/Alain Frogley, "Ralph Vaughan-Williams": Grove Music
Online, ed. L. Macy (subscription required). Retrieved
- The Gramophone
- Decca Records/Eclipse reissue
- Everest
Records' release of the 1958 recording.
- [1] Roger S. Gordon, Ralph Vaughan
Williams' Film Music, review, Positive Feedback on
Line Issue 29, accessed May 12, 2008
- The Death of Tintagiles
- see "YouTube videoclip" under External Links
- see "1956 audio interview" under External Links
- Center for Church Music songs and hymns
entry for Ralph Williams
External links