The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams transformed the simple elements of folk song and hymn into a glorious outpouring of musical compositions for solo voice, mixed chorus, and symphony orchestra. But he also incorporated a wide-ranging humanism in his use of texts by John Bunyan, Shakespeare, and Walt Whitman, and in his explorations of the themes of war and heroism.
In contrast to many of his contemporaries in music, Vaughan Williams led a quiet life. He was born on October 12, 1872, the son of a church rector, in Gloucestershire. In 1887, he was sent to Charterhouse school, where several of his compositions were performed, and in 1890 he entered the Royal College of Music in London, as a student of composition and organ. He took a Bachelor of Music degree in 1894, and an Arts degree from Trinity College in 1895. That year, he married Adeline Fischer and returned to the Royal College of Music to work towards a doctorate in music, supporting himself as an organist in South Lambeth Church. He studied in Berlin with the composer Max Bruch, and in 1908 began composition lessons in Paris with Maurice RAVEL. Although Vaughan Williams returned to England after three months, his correspondence with Ravel, who admired his work, continued for many years.
In 1904, Vaughan Williams was given the job of editing the new English HymnalThis collection of hymns was the composer’s first exercise in setting words to music for popular use, and many of the musical settings are fresh, miniature art forms. In addition, he spent time in Norfolk, England, together with his life-long friend Gustav HOLST, recording over 800 British folk songs. These tunes were to emerge years later in the incidental music for the play The Merry Wives of Windsor(1908), as well as in his operas Sir John in Love(1929) and Hugh the Drover(1924). Several of Vaughan Williams’s most enduring works were written in 1910, including the choral Sea Symphony,which was performed that year at the Leeds Festival, and the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.However, his first great success was A London Symphony,which premiered in 1914.
During World War I, Williams served in Macedonia and France. After demobilisation, he became professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, and the conductor of the Bach Choir from 1920 to 1926. During this time he wrote the Pastoral Symphony(1921), which looked for serenity after the war, and the choral Sancta Civitas(1925), an exploration of man’s soul, with texts from the book of Revelation.
He visited the United States for the first time during the Norfolk Festival (Connecticut) in 1923. The following year, he finished his opera, Hugh the Drover,and the song cycle, On Wenlock Edge.Vaughan Williams returned to the U.S. to lecture at Bryn Mawr in 1932, and at Cornell in 1954.
The gathering threat of World War II in Europe inspired Williams’ tremendous choral masterpiece Dona Nobis Pacem(1936), to which Walt Whitman contributed the text. His work for German refugees resulted in his music being banned by Nazi Germany. During the war, Vaughan Williams, entering his 70s, threw himself into war work with unabated energy.
Adeline, his wife of 54 years, died in 1951, and in 1953 he married Ursula Wood, an old family friend. He wrote the last five of his nine symphonies, the seventh of which was the Sinfonia antarctica,originally a score for the film Scott of the Antarctic(1948), and a large number of vocal and instrumental pieces. He died on August 26, 1958, leaving behind a rich body of work.
Jane Prendergast
SEE ALSO: ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; VOCAL AND CHORAL MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Vaughan Williams, Ursula. RVW (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984);
Vaughan Williams, Ursula, and Imogen Hoist, eds. Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Hoist: Correspondence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Dona Nobis Pacem; Lark Ascending; Sea Songs; A Sea Symphony, Serenade to Music; Sinfonia Antarctica; Symphony No. 5.