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, 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).
FUNDING
Postgraduate Composers
The 25/6 Vaughan Williams Scholarships of £8,000 each will be awarded to applicants who demonstrate exceptional compositional talent and who are intending to make composition their professional career. Scholarships are awarded towards the costs of study of a taught Masters course or PhD in composition at UK universities or conservatoires.
Congratulations to the seven composers who received Vaughan Williams Bursaries towards their Masters studies in composition in 2024.
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General Funding
VWF supports the work, performance and recording of British/Irish composers from the last 100 years; as well as projects which further the knowledge and understanding of the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of the work of Ursula Vaughan Williams.
Applications are now open. Ensembles, organisations and individuals are welcome to apply.
The Foundation also offers annual funding for postgraduate composition students.
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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NMC Recordings
@nmcrecordings
We had a brilliant day at St Silas Kentish Town last week recording ‘Gravity’ by @Robert_Laidlow with the fabulous @PiattiQuartet
The recording session was made possible with support from our Core Funders and @doricoofficial
@VWFndn @ace_national
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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This letter shows generosity of spirit…
RVW had refused a knighthood, saying that he always refused honours that “involved obligation to anyone in authority” but he accepted a higher Order of Merit in 1935, the year of this letter.
Andrew Strange Music
@asmartists
Onyx Brass’s recent world premiere recording of works by Britten, Vaughan Williams, Walton, John Adams and Gershwin (the last two in arrangements) with conductor John Wilson for Chandos will be launched at their Aldeburgh Festival concert on 29 June.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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The @HGchamber Spring Celebration Concert, marking 50 years since Arthur Bliss’s death and 40 years of Bryan Western conducting HSO, features music by Elgar, Bliss alongside Vaughan-Williams’ Symphony No 5, with cello soloist Lily Dai.
Details here: https://www.harrogatechamber.co.uk/business-hub/the-hso-spring-celebration-concert
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Sorry everyone – we are having a small problem with the website so if you are trying to get your application for the Vaughan Williams Scholarships today before the deadline please don’t panic – normal service should be resumed within the hour!!
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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From a lengthy list of feedback on “Foxy’s” book, co-authored with Maud Karpeles…
The rest of the letter is here, and a good read for anyone interested in Cecil Sharp or in folk music! https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/letter/letter-from-ralph-vaughan-williams-to-a-h-fox-strangways/
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Composed on the eve of the First World War, The Lark Ascending has enthralled listeners for over a century.
Explore the history of one of RVW’s most famous works with @ClassicFM here: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/vaughan-williams/the-lark-ascending-history/
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Deadline on Monday!
VWF Scholarships are offered to exceptionally talented PhD and Masters students of composition at British universities or conservatoires who anticipate a career as a professional composer.
Find out more here: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/funding/postgraduate-funding/
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Tonight!
Following its acclaimed production of Hugh the Drover, The New London Opera Group returns to Vaughan Williams with a new concert production of The Poisoned Kiss.
Friday and Saturday at Holy Trinity Church in Kensington.
🎫 https://newlondonoperagroup.org/2025/01/16/the-poisoned-kiss-tickets-on-sale-now/
Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Tonight!
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 Sir Adrian Boult (BBC)
Letter No.: VWL1618
From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.
Oct 24 [1939]
Dear Adrian
I wrote to the D.G.1
Here is his substitutes deputies2 answer.
You will see he has not even troubled to find out what my grievance was, which was, as you know, not that there was not a certain amount of ‘serious’ music but that the quality of the ‘serious’ music was so half hearted.3
Yrs
RVW
1. Director General (of the B.B.C.). For the letter see VWL1609.
2. i.e. substitute’s deputy’s! The reply came from the Controller (Public Relations).
3. VW had clearly sent Boult a copy of his original letter to the Director General, as he mentions in VWL5000, and was now reporting the result. Boult wrote privately to VW on 26th October:
Thank you for your second letter. I return your B.B.C. reply. I did not write sooner because I have been moving about and I wanted to think over your letter a little more carefully. I think you will realize that in a post mortem of this period I do not intend to be unvocal, and I think you will guess how I feel about the whole matter. I have perhaps been too easy-going in the past and only occasionally put forward the plea that I am the only broadcasting Director of Music in any broadcasting organization who is not absolute master of his own programme policy. Between these four walls I can tell you that I am saying it pretty forcibly at the moment, but I do not think resignation would be any use or threats of that kind because I have reason to believe, though I have not been officially told, that a certain amount of the instructions that come to us in regard to these emergency programmes both at the present time and when they were planned some time before the crisis, had emanated from Whitehall, and I do not think Whitehall, or that part of it that is capable of giving instructions that the public is to be amused at all costs even when they have just been told that a battleship has been sunk, cares whether A.C.B or X.Y.Z. is Director of Music of the B.B.C.
I do not want to make any excuses, but it is a fact that between September 2nd and 11th nine symphonies were performed by the following composers, Haydn, Beethoven, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, i.e. one a day. Did you realize this? I admit that many of them were at impossible times to listen, but, rightly or wrongly, we have assumed (no doubt here again under instructions) that most of Britain had gone on a shift system and would be listening at all times of the day. Did you see that delightful letter from Manchester in last week’s Radio Times about the eight o’clock Concerts? It made me want to do one every day.
In regard to the enclosure, which I return, I have taken steps to see that the Director-General personally sees your letter. He has been travelling a good deal, and it may have been passed on in his absence.
ACB
