Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was the central figure of the twentieth-century English musical renaissance: the composer who, more than any other, gave English music a distinct national voice freed from German domination. Drawing deeply on English folk song (which he collected) and on the Tudor church music he loved, he forged a style at once rooted in the past and strikingly original. A late developer who went to Paris in his mid-thirties to study with Ravel and clarify his textures, he produced a vast and varied output over sixty years (nine symphonies, the Tallis Fantasia, The Lark Ascending, operas, songs and choral works), ranging from pastoral serenity to harsh modernity. He composed into his eighties, his music marked throughout by a visionary, questing spirit and a deep humanity.