#15400, Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Our biography is provided by the London Symphony Orchestra:

Early life
Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in the pretty Gloucestershire village of Down Ampney. Though he received a cosmopolitan training, including studying with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris, he is regarded as one of the most quintessentially English of composers.

Finding success
During the 19th century, Britain had often been dismissed as a ‘land without music’. Vaughan Williams was a significant figure in putting Britain back on the musical map, dedicating himself to challenging the fact that British composers were, as he put it, ‘unappreciated at home and unknown abroad’. He made a significant contribution to the development of almost every musical genre and produced a vast body of works that would stand the test of time. Some of his works are charming and immediately accessible, others more stylistically bold and ambitious. Vaughan Williams’ success paved the way for later British figures such as Benjamin Britten, while numerous present-day composers, including James Macmillan, Mark-Antony Turnage and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, have stated that Vaughan Williams influenced their work. He was a great advocate for women’s composition and taught many women students at the Royal College of Music.

The World in Vaughan Williams’ Day
Born in the Victorian age but living well into the era of the Welfare State, Vaughan Williams witnessed a tremendous amount of social, political and cultural change over the course of his long life. He lived through two World Wars, serving in France and Salonika in the First (when his hearing was damaged by the sound of constant gunfire) and writing music for propaganda films in the Second, something that reveals him to have been a modern figure who wasn’t afraid of responding to changing technology.

A Composer of Contradictions
Vaughan Williams is a figure of contradictions. Often seen as a cosy, conservative purveyor of nostalgia for a lost rural arcadia, he was in fact a politically left-leaning figure who saw himself first and foremost as a Londoner, campaigned for social justice, and wrote some decidedly forward-looking works. His music is often regarded as spiritual, yet he was a non-believer. He was a devotee of ‘serious’ literature, yet also an avid reader of Vogue. Those who knew Vaughan Williams well recalled a genial man, and orchestral musicians respected him, despite what was said to have been his rather ponderous conducting technique. On occasions where he became annoyed in rehearsal, he would apologise profusely afterwards. He could also be witty and self-deprecating: when asked by one player whether a note in the Fourth Symphony was correct, he replied, ‘Well, it’s B-flat. I know it looks wrong – and sounds wrong – but it’s right.’

A knighthood was offered but refused