Ralph Vaughan Williams
composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the great innovators of 20th-century British music. In essays such as Who Wants the English Composer? (1912), National Music (1934) and Nationalism and Internationalism (1953), he tirelessly emphasised the central role of native folklore in the creation of a national musical idiom. At an early stage, he turned away from the widespread late Romantic and neo-Romantic influences from the European continent and eventually found a new “English” idiom.
Born in Down Ampney in south-west England in 1872, Ralph Vaughan Williams studied at the Royal College of Music in London under Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford from 1890, before transferring to Charles Wood’s class at Trinity College, Cambridge University. After earning a bachelor’s degree in music and history, he worked as an organist in south London for two years before returning to the Royal College of Music in 1896 to continue his studies, where he met Gustav Holst. Vaughan Williams also took lessons from Max Bruch in Berlin in 1897 and obtained his Doctor of Music degree two years later, although he only felt he had received sufficient training after further studies under Maurice Ravel in Paris. During these years, Vaughan Williams worked as an organist, choirmaster and orchestra conductor in London. From 1904 onwards, he carried out field research, mainly in Norfolk, Essex and Sussex, collecting more than 800 English folk songs, which he edited and published. He taught composition at the Royal College of Music from 1919 onwards – his students included Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra and Constant Lambert. From 1920 to 1928, he conducted the Bach Choir, whose performances were considered national events. Vaughan Williams was also president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. His extensive oeuvre includes nine symphonies, numerous other orchestral compositions, several operas and stage works, chamber music, songs, choral music and film scores.
