Welcome to the Vaughan Williams Foundation – one of the foremost sources of funding for recent and contemporary music in the UK

The Vaughan Williams Foundation is a grant-giving charity which upholds the values and vision of the celebrated composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and his wife Ursula Vaughan Williams.

Our principal aims are to honour RVW’s desire to support his fellow composers through funding for performances and recordings, and to help make his own work widely accessible to the general public.

VWF was founded in 2022, 150 years after the composer’s birth, and brings together the two charities originally set up by Ralph (RVW Trust) and Ursula (Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust).

THE FOUNDATION

Funding

Vaughan Williams Scholarships

Applications are now open for the 2026 Vaughan Williams Scholarships.
4 scholarships of £8,000 each are awarded annually to postgraduate students of composition.

For more than 40 years Vaughan Williams funding has been awarded to support postgraduate study in composition. The 270 previous recipients have included names such as Julian Anderson, Christian Alexander, Anna Meredith, Graham Fitkin, Larry Goves, Gavin Higgins, Hannah Kendall and Daniel Kidane.

Congratulations to our 2025 Vaughan Williams Scholars: Tom Burkhill, Lucy Holmes, André Faria Serra and Elliott Park.


HOW TO APPLY

Funding

Applications Open

Composers are at the heart of what we do. VWF offers three annual funding rounds towards:

the performance, commission and recording of music by British and Irish composers active in the last 100 years, and/or

work which furthers the knowledge and understanding of the life and work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of Ursula Vaughan Williams.

We welcome applications from ensembles, organisations and individuals.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES

Our new Trustees

Joining the Board

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Sam Wigglesworth, Harriet Wybor and Raymond Yiu as new Trustees, bringing with them a wealth of experience and a passion for music.

We are so grateful for their commitment to the Foundation and look forward to working with them to develop VWF for the future.

Find out more about the faces behind the VWF and our work.

WHO WE ARE

RVW

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is one of the greatest of British composers whose music, generosity and vision for community music making continue to impact British musical life.


Find out more about the composer and explore our extensive archive of letters and photographs and catalogue of published works.

DISCOVER

READ THE LATEST

BBC Music Magazine

For Vaughan Williams, The Pilgrim’s Progress represented a deeply personal journey that inspired several works, writes Geraint Lewis

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

Discover more about the life and work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the work of the Vaughan Williams Foundation, via our website: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/the-foundation/

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

One of the best-known and loved English composers, Vaughan Williams was the great-nephew of Charles Darwin and the great-great-grandson of Josiah Wedgewood. He refused a knighthood multiple times…

…and he loved cats 😺

Seen here with ‘Foxy’.

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

“Ravishing new accounts breathe life into a favourite pairing” – The Strad recommends a new recording of Bruch: Violin Concerto no.1, Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.

BBC Music Magazine

Vaughan Williams’ Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis made an instant impression when it was first performed. Here is the story of the first-ever performance of the Tallis Fantasia

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

The Vaughan Williams Foundation funds the work of composers and projects relating to the life and work of Ralph and Ursula Vaughan Williams.

We have 3 deadlines annually for general funding – the next is in the spring 🌷

Check our website for more details 💻

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

This Friday!

Baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Christopher Glynn present Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel as part of a winter programme at the Wigmore Hall in London.

🎫 https://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/202601091930

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

The manuscript Vaughan Williams used at the 1910 premiere of A Sea Symphony was so large and heavy that a stand collapsed under its weight during one of the rehearsals!

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Ville de Limoges

Concert symphonique Haydn / Mozart / Vaughan Williams vendredi 9 janvier à 20h à l’Opéra #Limoges 👉 https://swll.to/A62Er © Steve Barek

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

Donald Macleod charts the long life and career of Vaughan Williams.

📻 Listen here via BBC Radio Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03pr534

THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Featured Letter

Get to know the man and his music

RVW’s wide-ranging correspondence – with family, pupils, fellow composers, conductors and performers – paints an intriguing portrait of the man, as well as providing fascinating insights into his major preoccupations: musical, personal and political.


Our searchable database includes over 5000 annotated transcriptions of his correspondence all available to read online.

BROWSE THE LETTERS

Letter of the Day

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Clive Carey

Letter No.: VWL4876

The White Gates,
Dorking,

19th January, 1949.

Dear Clive
I feel quite ashamed of myself in worrying you so much and so you simply must not answer this letter.
I am so glad or your opinion and I think you are right.
As regards the key of promise – it is mentioned at the end of Act II, but I doubt if this is necessary.  In fact I think this is almost too realistic in a purely fanciful opera.  The scene with the key in the book occurs in Doubting Castle and no mention has been made of it before, so we must suppose that the preselect were born with keys round their necks, and that the Pilgrim had simply forgotten about this one.
As regards his dress at the end of Act II, it is mentioned, at all events in later editions of the libretto, that he changes his armour for the conventional Pilgrim’s dress.
Thank you once again for all tor help and please do not answer this.
yrs
RVW
(R. Vaughan Williams).

Clive Carey, Esq.,
85, St. Mark’s Road, London, W.10.

His music continues to inspire us. Its incredible breadth of style and outlook seems especially important in our polarised times.

CHRISTOPHER GLYNN, artistic director, Ryedale Festival

Among his acts were countless kindnesses, known only to himself and the persons concerned. He gave continuous encouragement to younger men. He had the dignified humility of a great man, and was utterly unself-seeking.

SIR ARTHUR BLISS, conductor

I cannot stress enough how important this organisation’s work is, what a profound difference it is making, and how it has enabled so many to develop creatively and give new work a platform. Vaughan Williams himself would surely be so proud of this legacy. 

ZOE MARTLEW, composer and cellist

It is necessary to know facts, but music will enable you to see past facts to the very essence of things in a way which science cannot do. The arts are the means by which we can look through the magic casements and see what lies beyond. 

RVW, letter to the children of Swaffham Primary School, 1958