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).
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
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.
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.
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
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 Michael Kennedy
Letter No.: VWL3461
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
January 26th 1957.
Dear Michael,
I was so glad to get your letter, though I find some of it difficult to answer.1 Your question of who is the greatest man in my life time, is very difficult to say. I don’t think Churchill, somehow, but a few names, taken at random would include Brahms, Walt Whitman and General Booth. But it is an almost impossible one to answer … and of course there is also Sibelius. It took me some time to get accustomed to his number 6, but I rather believe now that it is his greatest. I am sorry I missed the broadcast.
I have no particular use for Bruckner. I have never got over the first symphony I heard of his, in which 4 Wagner Tubas played what sounded like old English glees.
I am glad you like my oboe tune. Evelyn gave a wonderful performance of it.2 We shall be so glad if you can come to hear the John.3 We haven’t been to hear the Britten ballet4 yet – it is rather difficult to find a night – but we intend to. Our next excitement is the Finzi concert tomorrow. Carol Case is singing a hitherto unheard Hardy cycle by him.5 This seems rather a catalogue, but you ask me so many questions and I enjoy answering them so much. My love, and three kisses please to Eslyn, but perhaps she is la Belle Dame sans merci, in which case it must be four.6 And all love from us both,
Yrs
Ralph
You must read
In a Great Tradition by the Community at Stanbrook
and more exciting, but a good follow – Time out of Mind by Joan Grant
& finally, most exciting of all – The Third Eye, Lobsang Rampa.7
1. Original reads with a typing error: ‘an almost one impossible to answer’.
2. Evelyn Rothwell (Barbirolli) had given a performance of VW’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings (Catalogue of Works 1944/1).
3. VW was to conduct a performance of Bach’s St. John’s Passion at Dorking on 23rd February.
4. The Prince of the Pagodas, which was first given on 1 January at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
5. A concert of works by Gerald Finzi was given on 27th January at the Victoria & Albert Museum by the Chamber Music Society with Eric Greene, John Carol Case, Kathleen Long and Howard Ferguson and the Kalmar Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Russell. The programme contained Richard Mudge’s 4th concerto for strings (edited by Finzi), the first performances of I said to love, a setting by Gerald Finzi of 6 Hardy poems for baritone and piano, and of the Eclogue for piano and strings, and ended with Dies Natalis.
6. Reference to the Keats poem: “… and there I shut her wild wild eyes / with kisses four.”
7. This entire last passage is a postscript from UVW enclosed on a separate sheet of writing paper.
