Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. 1872, Down Ampney, Gloucestershire; 
d. 1958, London)

As a child, Ralph Vaughan Williams studied violin and admired the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He studied piano and organ at the Royal College of Music and “despaired of imitating [Johannes] Brahms and [Richard] Wagner.” He later studied orchestration in Paris with Maurice Ravel, whose influence is seen in the sureness of Vaughan Williams’s orchestrations following his study with the master.

English folksong was crucial in the development of Vaughan Williams’s compositional style; between 1903 and 1913 he collected over 800 songs and variants in various regions of England. Folksong, however, was just one of many factors that contributed to his development as a composer. He wrote, “A musician who wishes to say anything worth saying must first of all express himself.”

Vaughan Williams avidly supported the revival of interest in the music of early English composers such as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Thomas Weelkes. His spectacular “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” for double string orchestra and string quartet, caused one critic to declare: “It is full of visions which have haunted the seers of all times.”