Ralph Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams rates an exceptional 12 pages of entry in the New Groves: rightly so, for he is, with Benjamin Britten, one of the greatest British composers of the 20th Century. He was born in 1872 in the small Gloucestershire village of Down Ampney (pronounced “Am-ney”, the 'p' being silent), where his father was the vicar of the local church. His father, however, died when Ralph (pronounced “Rayf”) was only 3 years of age, after which the family moved to the ancestral home at Leith Hill Place, in Surrey. Via his mother, Ralph was related to both the Wedgwood pottery tycoons and the Darwin family: Charles Darwin was his great uncle. He was encouraged in his interest of music by the family, though they were somewhat shocked by his subsequent determination to make a living from it. He studied music properly both at the Royal College of Music and Cambridge University, at Trinity College, and went on to study with both Ravel and Bruch. He was dissatisfied with the highly Germanised nature of English music at that time and found creative solace in English folksong and Elizabethan and Jacobean music. This sense of 'national music' became a keystone of his compositional approach: something distinctively English was, he felt, vital and necessary. He brought this philosophy to his work on a revised version of The English Hymnal, which he edited in 1906, weeding out much Victoriana, adapting some 40 folk songs as hymns and adding some much-loved tunes of his own devising along the way.

It was not, however, until 1909/1910 that he produced the first couple of his most distinctive masterpieces: On Wenlock Edge and the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. Two symphonies then followed. However: bear in mind that in 1912, he was already 40 years of age: he had but a handful of great works to his name, so he was something of a late developer! Although he was well past the age at which it was compulsory to serve, he nevertheless volunteered for duty in the First World War, where he served as a wagon orderly in the Royal Army Medical Corps in both France and Salonika. He later returned to France as an artillery officer.

After the First World War, he went back to the Royal College of Music, this time to teach. His third symphony soon followed, with his fourth coming in 1935: it's sudden use of astringent dissonance seemed radically new at the time and marked him out as the leader of the “English school” of composition: he was recognised as such by an offer of a knighthood (which he turned down) and the Order of Merit (which he accepted). In 1937, he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the University of Hamburg: this troubled him, causing him to accept it on the understanding that “I belong to more than one English society whose object is to combat all that the present German regime stands for”. His support for German refugees caused him to be banned by the Nazis in 1939: something of a badge of honour for him, I would have thought. His fifth symphony was first performed in 1943; his sixth came in 1948. His seventh arose as a result of a new interest that had developed: writing music for films, starting with the wartime propaganda film 49th Parallel: this time, the inspiration was his work on the film Scott of the Antarctic. Two other symphonies came in the last years of his life, his death being announced the morning of its first recording sessions at which he had been due to attend.

It is a fine question to ask: which of Britten and Vaughan Williams was the greater composer? It's actually quite tricky to answer that, because the answer depends on your understanding of what greatness means. Personally, I find Britten the more innovative, technical genius with a startling lack of ability to express human emotion. His operatic heroes are all misfits and incapable of expressing themselves emotionally: Billy Budd stammers; Peter Grimes speaks with his fists; Aschenbach cannot speak to Tadzio at all… and so on. Vaughan Williams, however, is easily the more humane, emotionally generous man. His music is, perhaps, less intellectually challenging than Britten's, but it oozes charm, attractiveness, skill and compassion by the bucket-load! I wouldn't be without either, but I definitely think RVW was the greater man.

In addition to his symphonies (of which I would especially recommend numbers 5, 8, 3 and 4, in that order), I would urge anyone wanting to get acquainted with the best of his music to listen to his operas Sir John in Love and The Pilgrim's Progress: both are full of incident and glorious music. I defy anyone to listen to the “Pardon me, wife” aria from Sir John without bawling their eyes out, for example. Obviously, too, there is the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but his Mass in G minor is a miniature masterpiece, too. His Christmas work, Hodie is a late -but most welcome- addition to the Christmas canon, too.