Ralph Vaughan Williams [1872–1958] has gained a reputation, alongside Benjamin Britten, as one of the two most influential British classical composers of the twentieth century. Much of his early musical career involved playing the violin and also conducting. He began his training at London’s Royal College of Music (RCM) and followed that with studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. During a second stint at RCM, Vaughan Williams forged two friendships that would serve him well throughout his career. Leopold Stokowski would go on to introduce half a dozen Vaughan Williams symphonies—he wrote nine in all—to audiences in the United States, and fellow composer Gustav Holst (he of The Planets fame) became a lifelong musical influence. Vaughan Williams would later be named as professor of composition at RCM.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was strongly devoted to English folk songs, and their tunes can be found sprinkled throughout his compositions. His first published work [1901] was a piece for voice and piano, set to the poem Linden Lea by William Barnes. Other songs followed, with text by such poets as Tennyson and Rossetti. His first great orchestral work, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, had its premiere in September 1910, and A Sea Symphony (later known as Symphony No. 1) was first performed in Leeds a month later. His next major piece was A London Symphony, which received its premiere in March 1914. The Lark Ascending, written for violin and orchestra, followed later that year.
At the outbreak of World War I, Vaughan Williams enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and he served with an ambulance unit in France for much of the conflict. He resumed his compositional career in postwar England with pieces that included Mass in G minor for double chorus plus orchestra, as well as Pastoral Symphony and a musical setting of a small portion of John Bunyan’s seminal work, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” that evolved into one scene of a full-length opera, one that would not be completed until 1950! The 1920s came to an end with the premiere of the Vaughan Williams opera Sir John in Love, based on the Shakespeare play “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
Due in great part to the fact that his father had been a vicar (and although the young Vaughan Williams lost him at age 3, he was surrounded by relatives whose careers were church-related), the composer wrote a considerable amount of liturgical choral music. Most notable among these are the oratorios Sancta Civitas [1925] and Hodie [1954], plus a great many hymns and Christmas songs. His chamber music includes three string quartets plus a quintet, as well as several organ preludes. Throughout the 1940s he was popular as a composer of film and radio play scores.
Violinist Eleonora Turovsky plays the first part of The Lark Ascending: