Ralph Vaughan Williams — A Profile
Whose Music is often Inspired by English Literature and Folk Song
One of the finest biographies of Ralph Vaughan Williams is James Day’s 1961, Vaughan Williams, one in the series, The Master Musicians, which is a concise, yet in depth, exploration of RVW’s life and work, and a book that, like RVW’s music, embraces that which is at the heart of Englishness (and there is such a thing), through the country’s folk traditions, and not least the blood that was shed in the name of freedom during the brutal Civil War, and the maturing of English literature, poetry and drama, that would bring forth composers such as Parry, Elgar, Delius, and, perhaps most importantly when it comes to Englishness, Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music goes back to those blood drenched struggles of the 17th century, and the words of Shakespeare, and not least the powerful orations of Oliver Cromwell, often inspired by the stinging, hard edged, poetry of John Milton, and the literary masterpiece that is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. All of that is distilled into RVW’s music.
Listening recently to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music (with the text taken from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice), first performed in the 1930s as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood, I am again struck by RVW’s complete openness as a human being…
