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).
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.
FUNDING
Vaughan Williams Scholarships
Congratulations to our four new Vaughan Williams Scholars: Tom Burkhill, Lucy Holmes, André Faria Serra and Elliott Park.
The Vaughan Williams Scholarships of £8,000 each are awarded annually to postgraduate students of composition.
VWF also 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 music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of the work of Ursula Vaughan Williams.
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.
READ THE LATEST
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Our next general funding application window opens on October 13.
💻 More information via our website
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“Has there ever been a more confident and dazzling opening to any first symphony than the blazing brass fanfare and choral outburst on the words “Behold, the sea itself”?” – Chris Garlick writing for @bachtrack.
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New opera!
In Dublin Jack, Conor Mitchell & The Belfast Ensemble delve into the seedy underbelly of Victorian London…
🎶 October 9: Purcell Room, Southbank Centre
🎶 November 14: Outburst Queer Arts Festival, Belfast
VWF supported – we wish them a great run! 👏
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Dr Gavan Ring
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General sale today for mine and Fiachra Garvey’s 2026 St Patrick’s Day Special recital at @wigmore_hall featuring the UK premiere of @StephenMcNeff’s Ballads of a Bogman and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel! Book now! https://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/202603171300
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Vaughan Williams – a man of few words?
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In September, the Vaughan Williams Foundation welcomed three new trustees. Find out more here: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/news/welcome-to-our-new-trustees/
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A new recording of the London Symphony Orchestra performing Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 9, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, is now available!
These symphonies form a portrait of a composer who could embrace both light and shadow with equal mastery 🎼
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On October 5, 1938, Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music premiered at the Royal Albert Hall. Conducted by Sir Henry Wood, the orchestra included players from the @londonsymphony, @BBCSO and @LPOrchestra.
In the audience was Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was moved to tears…
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“Despite its serene, idyllic sound, the Third is conceived near the front line while VW is on active service in World War I.
“‘Not really lambkins frisking at all’, wrote the composer many years later”.
@MusicMagazine reflect on RVW’s 3rd Symphony: https://www.classical-music.com/features/works/guide-vaughan-williamss-symphony-no-3-pastoral-symphony
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Best RVW works – a udiscovermusic 2024 article entitled Best Vaughan Williams Works: 10 Essential Pieces, has The Lark Ascending in the top spot.
Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ is at number 2…
What do you think?
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.
Letter of the Day
Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Guthrie Foote (OUP)
Letter No.: VWL2388
The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.
3rd April 1952
To confirm telephone conversation
Dear Foote
About two years ago I gave a private performance here of a small work for a chorus and orchestra with reciter, which Alan Frank heard, and I think approved of.1
I have now revised it and Mr. Rose2 of Queen’s College, Oxford wants to do it with his choir. There is not time, even if you were willing, to get the work out before June, when they want to perform it, but they propose that they should photograph sufficient vocal parts off the original manuscript for their purposes.
What I want to know is, how will this affect you if we ever propose to publish it? Perhaps you will let me know your opinion about this, because Mr. Rose naturally wants the vocal parts as soon as possible.3
Yrs
R. Vaughan Williams
G. Foote, Esq.,
Oxford University Press.
1. An Oxford Elegy, Catalogue of Works 1949/2. The performance was given by the Tudor Singers under Harry Stubbs on 20th November 1949.
2. Bernard Rose, Organist of Queens College, Oxford 1939-1957 and of Magdalen College, Oxford 1957-1981. An Oxford Elegy was performed by The Eglesfield Musical Society with Steuart Wilson, conducted by Bernard Rose in the Hall of Queen’s College, Oxford, on Thursday 19 June 1952. Wilson was in tears at the end. Afterwards “we drove back with the Finzis to Ashmansworth” (RVW: a biography, p.321). They returned to London next day.
3. Foote replied on 4th April that Oxford University Press would publish the work and that when Rose had finished with the parts they should be sent to OUP and would be available to him thereafter without charge.
