Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958) was an influential British composer. He was a student at the Royal College of Music and Trinity College, Cambridge and served as a lieutenant in World War I. He wrote nine symphonies between 1910 and 1958 as well as numerous other works including chamber music, opera, choral music and film scores.

Biography

Born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, where his father Arthur Vaughan Williams was rector, he was taken by his mother to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, the Wedgwood family home in the North Downs, after his father's early death in 1875. He was also related to the Darwins, Charles Darwin being a great-uncle. Ralph (pronounced "rafe") was therefore born into the privileged intellectual upper middle class, but never took it for granted and worked tirelessly all his life for the democratic and egalitarian ideals he believed in.

After Charterhouse School he attended the Royal College of Music (RCM) under Charles Villiers Stanford. He read history and music at 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 close friend. His composing 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. A big step forward in his style occurred when he studied with Maurice Ravel in Paris.

In 1904 he discovered English folk songs, which were fast becoming extinct owing to the increase of literacy and printed music in rural areas. He collected many himself and edited them. He also incorporated some into his music, being fascinated by the beauty of the music and its anonymous history in the working lives of ordinary people.

In 1910 he had his first big public successes conducting the premieres of the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1), and a greater success with A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) in 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye. Although at 40, and as an ex-public schoolboy, he could easily have avoided war service or been commissioned as an officer, he enlisted as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and had a gruelling time as a stretcher bearer before being commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery. On one occasion he was too ill to stand but continued to direct his battery lying on the ground. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a process of loss of hearing which was eventually to cause 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 profoundly mystical style in the Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3) and Flos Campi, a work for viola solo, small orchestra, and wordless chorus. From 1924 a new phase in his music began, characterised 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(described as "A Masque for Dancing"). This period in his music culminated in the Symphony No. 4 in F minor, first played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1935. Vaughan Williams later made a historic recording of the work. During this period he lectured in America and England, and conducted the Bach Choir and an annual festival at Dorking.

His music now entered a mature lyrical phase, as in the Five Tudor Portraits; the "morality" The Pilgrim's Progress; the Serenade to Music (a setting from act five of The Merchant of Venice, for orchestra and sixteen vocal soloists); 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. Before his death in 1958 he completed four more symphonies, including No 7 'Sinfonia Antartica' (Italian spelling), based on his earlier film score for "Scott of the Antarctic". 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. 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). He also wrote an arrangement of The Old One Hundreth Psalm Tune for the Coronation Service of Queen Elizabeth II.

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 everyone to make their own music, however simple, as long as it is truly their own.

He was married twice. His first wife, Adeline Fisher, died in 1951. In 1953 he married the poet Ursula Wood (b. 1911), whom he had known since the late 1930s and with whom he collaborated on a number of vocal works. Ursula later wrote Vaughan Williams's biography "RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams", which remains the standard work on his life.

Despite being highly involved in church music, Vaughan Williams was a professed atheist.

Selected compositions

See also Category:Compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

• Linden Lea, song (1901)
• Songs of Travel (1904)
• In the Fen Country for orchestra (1904)
• Toward the Unknown Region, song for chorus and orchestra, setting of Walt Whitman (1906)
• String Quartet No. 1 in G minor (1908)
• On Wenlock Edge, song cycle for tenor, piano and string quartet (1909)
• A Sea Symphony (Symphony No. 1) — choral symphony on texts by Whitman (1903-1909)
• The Wasps, Aristophanic suite (1909)
• Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910)
• Five Mystical Songs for baritone, chorus and orchestra, settings of George Herbert (1911)
• Phantasy Quintet for 2 violins, 2 violas and cello (1912)
• A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) (1913)
• The Lark Ascending for violin and orchestra (1914)
• Hugh the Drover or Love in the Stocks, opera (1910-20)
• Three preludes on Welsh hymn tunes, for organ (1956)
• A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 3) (1921)
• Mass in G minor for unaccompanied choir (1922)
• English Folk Songs Suite for brass band (1923)
• Three Shakespeare songs (1925)
• Flos Campi for viola and orchestra (1925)
• Concerto Accademico for violin and orchestra (1924-25)
• Sir John in Love, opera (1924-28), from which comes an arrangement by Ralph Greaves of Fantasia on Greensleeves
• Te Deum in G (1928)
• Job, a masque for dancing (1930)
• Piano Concerto in C (1926-31)
• Symphony No. 4 in F minor (1931-34)
• Five Tudor Portraits (1935)
• Dona nobis pacem (1936)
• Suite for Viola and Small Orchestra (1936-38)
• Serenade to Music for sixteen solo voices and orchestra, a setting of Shakespeare (1938)
• Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus (1939)
• Symphony No. 5 in D (1938-43)
• String Quartet No. 2 in A minor (1942-44)
• Concerto in A minor for oboe and strings (1944)
• Symphony No. 6 in E minor (1946-47)
• Romance in D flat for harmonica and orchestra (1951) written for Larry Adler
• Sinfonia Antartica (Symphony No. 7) (1949-52) — based on his music for the film Scott of the Antarctic
• The Pilgrim's Progress, a morality (1906-52)
• Concerto in F minor for bass tuba and orchestra (1954)
• Symphony No. 8 in D minor (1953-55)
• Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-57)
• Ten Blake songs (1957)

External links

• 1956 audio interview with Vaughan Williams (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/vaughanwilliamsr1.shtml) on his editing a hymnal (from the BBC)
• The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society (http://www.rvwsociety.com/)
• Ralph Vaughan Williams (http://www.agentsmith.com/rvw.php) web site by Jaron Collisda:Ralph Vaughan Williams

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