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11 unusual facts about Ralph Vaughan Williams


A Pastoral Symphony

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 3, published as A Pastoral Symphony and not numbered until later, was completed in 1922.

Bernard Reichel

His musical language is militantly tonal considering the time in which he wrote and taught, and informed by folk music and medieval modes in a way reminiscent, perhaps, of Ralph Vaughan Williams' work.

Catalogues of classical compositions

Other composers simply never used opus numbers at all (examples include Copland, Vaughan Williams and many other 20th-century composers).

Ettore Mazzoleni

While there he had the opportunity to work closely with Sir Adrian Boult and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

From 1885 he was Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin: it was in this capacity that he advised the young Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch.

Is My Team Ploughing

The text, along with other poems from A Shropshire Lad, has been famously set to score by several English composers, including George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ivor Gurney.

John Skelton

Five of Skelton's 'Tudor Portraits', including 'The Tunnying of Elynour Rummyng' were set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams in or around 1935.

Liturgy of St James

The English Hymnal features the 1906 Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of the English verses of the Cherubic hymn of the Offertory chant (see above) to the melody of a French folk tune Picardy.

Pan's Anniversary

More notably, an April 1905 production at Stratford-upon-Avon, part of a Shakespeare Birthday Celebration, featured incidental music composed by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

RVW

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores

Seán Ó Riada

Ó Riada also composed and directed classical music for theatre and film, combining traditional Irish tunes and "sean-nós" (old style) songs with the classical orchestral tradition, similar to noted nationalist composers such as Dvořák (Czeck), Bartók (Hungarian) and Ralph Vaughan Williams (English).


Cambridge Greek Play

Among famous names involved in those early days were Rupert Brooke as the Herald in Aeschylus' Eumenides (1906), Sir Hubert Parry as the composer of incidental music to Aristophanes' The Birds (1883) – the Bridal March is still used in weddings – and Ralph Vaughan Williams as composer of incidental music to The Wasps, also by Aristophanes (1909).

Carol Symphony

It had its first performance on 26 September 1929 at a promenade concert at the Queen's Hall which was broadcast live on the BBC's 2LO, with other music by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Percy Pitt.

Cecil Coles

Cortege also appears on Artists Rifles, an audiobook CD issued in 2004 featuring war poetry read by Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, David Jones, Edgell Rickword and Lawrence Binyon, as well as music by Edward Elgar, George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Maurice Ravel, Gustav Holst, Ivor Gurney, Ernest Moeran and Arthur Bliss.

Colne Valley Youth Orchestra

Recently, the orchestra has tackled the Unfinished Symphony (No. 8 in B minor) by Schubert, Vaughan Williams' Fantasy on English Folk Songs, the Jupiter Symphony by Mozart, as well as the 'Raiders March' by John Williams, 'Pirates of the Caribbean' by Klaus Badelt.

Concerto grosso

In the twentieth century, the concerto grosso has been used by composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Ernest Bloch, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Bohuslav Martinů, Malcolm Williamson, Henry Cowell, Alfred Schnittke, William Bolcom, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Andrei Eshpai, Eino Tamberg, Krzysztof Penderecki, Jean Françaix and Philip Glass.

Edmund Fisher

His siblings included: H. A. L. Fisher, historian and Minister of Education; Admiral Sir William Wordsworth Fisher, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet; Florence Henrietta, Lady Darwin, playwright and wife of Sir Francis Darwin (son of Charles Darwin); and Adeline Vaughan Williams, wife of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Elizabeth Harwood

She had only one solo recital disc, a selection of English art songs by Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge, Arnold Bax, Michael Head, George Lloyd, and Roger Quilter recorded in London in 1983, released on the Conifer label, with John Constable on the piano.

English Hymnal

The English Hymnal was published in 1906 for the Church of England under the editorship of Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

English Musical Renaissance

Mackenzie became principal of the Royal Academy of Music; and at the Royal College of Music, Parry succeeded George Grove as director, and Stanford was professor of composition, with pupils including Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge, Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst, John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Frederick Grinke

Ralph Vaughan Williams dedicated his Sonata in A minor, written in 1952, to Grinke, who recorded the composer's Concerto Accademico in D minor, and The Lark Ascending, with the Boyd Neel Orchestra.

Green Bushes

Green Bushes is an English folk song (Roud #1040, Laws P2) which is featured in the second movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite, in Percy Grainger's Green Bushes (Passacaglia on an English Folksong), and in George Butterworth's The Banks of Green Willow.

Haydn and folk music

Haydn's early biographer Giuseppe Carpani claimed that the adult Haydn even did field work, collecting folk songs from the people as did Bartók and Vaughan Williams over a century later.

John Bridcut

He has also created documentaries about Ralph Vaughan Williams (The Passions of Vaughan Williams, 2008), Edward Elgar (The Man Behind the Mask, 2010) and Hubert Parry (The Prince and the Composer, 2011), the latter a collaboration with Charles, Prince of Wales, whom he had earlier profiled in Charles at 60: The Passionate Prince.

John Shirley-Quirk

Notable recordings include many of Britten's works and Mahler's Eighth Symphony under Sir Georg Solti on Decca, and Vaughan Williams' vocal works under Sir David Willcocks and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge for EMI.

Juliette Pochin

The Sky Shall Be Our Roof (rare songs from the operas of Ralph Vaughan Williams) – Sarah Fox (soprano), Juliette Pochin (mezzo-soprano), Andrew Staples (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano).

Liudmila Kovnatskaya

Among them were “Ars Britannica” (1988–1990), the festival in honour of “The 80th anniversary of B. Britten” (1993), “The World of Ralph Vaughan Williams” (1996), the festival of Britten’s music on his 85th anniversary (1998), the jubilee concert in honour of Britten and Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians (2003), the concert “World of Opera: Benjamin Britten”, and others.

Lyricist

The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams famously set existing poems, by men like William Cowper and Charles Wesley, to traditional folk tunes to create hymns, many of which he published in the English Hymnal.

Margaret Balfour

She is best remembered as the angel in Elgar's own recorded excerpts of The Dream of Gerontius (1927) and one of the 16 soloists in the original performance of Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music (1938).

Myer Fredman

His other recordings include the music of Britten, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Respighi, Rubbra, Sir Eugene Goossens, Arthur Benjamin, Richard Meale, Robert Still, and Ross Edwards.

Nicholas Gatty

Gatty was a close contemporary and friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams and from around 1900 the latter was to spend summer holidays with the Gattys at Hooton Roberts, between Rotherham and Doncaster, where Gatty's father was Rector.

Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1

Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 in E Minor (1906, rev. 1914) is an orchestral rhapsody by Ralph Vaughan Williams based on folk songs he had collected in the English county of Norfolk, in particular in the port town of King's Lynn and the surrounding region.

Songs of Travel and Other Verses

The work gained a new public and popularity when it was set to music in Songs of Travel by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The Marionettes Chorale

They have premiered several choral works in the Caribbean, including: Carmina Burana (Orff); Fanshawe’s African Sanctus; Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs, Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols; Francis Poulenc’s Gloria; Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts and Leonard Bernstein’s Missa Brevis and Chichester Psalms.

Walter Willson Cobbett

He became an active supporter of music, and commissioned numerous works of chamber music from emerging and leading British composers of his time, including chamber works by Benjamin Britten, Frank Bridge, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, Eugene Goossens.

When a Knight Won His Spurs

When a Knight Won His Spurs is a children's hymn written by Jan Struther and set to a folk melody (Stowey) and harmonised by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job

Ralph Vaughan Williams based his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing (first staged in 1931) upon the Illustrations.