Ralph Vaughan Williams
English Modern pastoralist rooted in folk song and Tudor polyphony
1872
1958
English
Modern
The Lark Ascending, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Early life
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born on 12 October 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, the son of a vicar. His family was distinguished — Charles Darwin was his great-uncle — and he received an excellent education at Charterhouse School, the Royal College of Music (where he studied with Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford), and Trinity College, Cambridge. Even after this extensive formal training, he felt his technique was incomplete and sought additional instruction from Max Bruch in Berlin in 1897 and, most significantly, from Maurice Ravel in Paris in 1908. Ravel, three years his junior, helped him achieve a lighter, more transparent orchestral texture.
Career and major works
From 1903 onwards, Vaughan Williams undertook extensive fieldwork collecting English folk songs in Norfolk, Sussex, and other rural counties, preserving melodies from elderly singers who were often the last people to remember them. This folk-song collecting — alongside his deep study of Tudor church music and the works of Purcell — shaped a musical language that was distinctively English yet never merely antiquarian. His orchestral works include the nine symphonies, ranging from the choral Sea Symphony (1910) to the bleak, visionary Sixth (1947) and the serene pastoral of the Third (1922). The Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), for double string orchestra and string quartet, is one of the most admired works of the twentieth century. The Lark Ascending (1914, revised 1920), a romance for violin and orchestra, has become one of the most popular works in the British concert repertoire. His operas include Hugh the Drover (1924) and the Shakespearean Sir John in Love (1929), and his film scores, including Scott of the Antarctic (1948), demonstrate his gift for evocative pictorial music.
Musical style and legacy
Vaughan Williams's music is characterised by modal harmony derived from folk song and Tudor polyphony, broad melodic lines, and a rich but never overloaded orchestral texture. His influence on English music was immense, liberating British composers from the dominance of the Austro-German tradition. He died in London on 26 August 1958.