Ralph Vaughan Williams

RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS d1958.  English composer and folk song collector. His works include ; operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions (including nine symphonies) written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor Music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. He was born to a well-to-do family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens and believed in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance. He was musically a late developer, not finding his true voice until his late thirties ; his studies in 1907–08 with the French composer Maurice Ravel helped him clarify the textures of his music. He is amongst the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods, from stormy and impassioned to tranquil, from mysterious to exuberant. Amongst the most familiar of his other concert works are Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) and The Lark Ascending (1914). His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. He wrote eight works for stage performance between 1919 and 1951. Two episodes made notably deep impressions in his personal life. The First World War (in which he served in the army) had a lasting emotional effect. Twenty years later, though in his sixties and devotedly married, he was reinvigorated by a love affair with a much younger woman, who later became his second wife. He went on composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last symphony just months before his death at the age of eighty-five in 1958. His works have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire and all his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been re-recorded.