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
Vaughan Williams Scholarships
Congratulations to our four new Vaughan Williams Scholars who have just been announced.
The Vaughan Williams Scholarships of £8,000 each are 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.
Applications for 2026 will open in December 2025
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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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📖 Ready for some racy holiday reading?!
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Applications for our 2026 scholarships open in December!
In the meantime, we’re thrilled to introduce the 2025 Vaughan Williams scholars 👏
Congratulations – wishing you a fascinating and rewarding year ahead. Listen out for these talented new voices!
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BBC Radio 3’s Record Review’s Building a Library, with Kate Kennedy and Gillian Moore, will feature Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.5 – Saturday, 2pm, and then available via BBC Sounds.
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✉️ Ralph Vaughan Williams offers advice to young composer and friend George Butterworth.
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The VWF database includes transcripts of over 5,000 items of annotated correspondence relating to the lives of Ralph and Ursula Williams. The letters are fully indexed and searchable, and can all be read online.
✉️ Find them here: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/discover/letters/
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Vaughan Williams’ thoughts on Edwardian discussions around class…
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In this episode of the All the Right Notes podcast, we look at the phenomenon of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending – why are we so obsessed with it?
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This letter to Rene Gattty, one of RVW’s university friends, refers to an unknown illness Gatty was suffering from. He did, it seems, recover, with a little bit of help from his friends.
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Explore the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2025/26 line-up – including Tchaikovsky and Vaughan Williams on Sunday, December 7.
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Our website has lots of useful resources relating to the life and works of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Explore a list of curated links here: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/discover/useful-links/
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 Arnold Barter
Letter No.: VWL742
13 Cheyne Walk
Chelsea, S.W.
[Before 1928]
My Dear Barter
Many thanks for your letter and enclosure – I’ve at all events found out that I’m not a “fit & proper” person to conduct my own works – If ever you do me the honour of performing anything of mine again I shall come & listen.1
Thank you & your choir once again from the bottom of my heart
Please thank your mother & brother as well as yourself for their most kind hospitality which made my visit such a pleasure.
Yrs very sincerely,
R. Vaughan Williams
1. This visit was probably the one referred to by VW in VWL2694, taking place a few years after the early performance in Bristol of the Sea Symphony when VW conducted the same work himself ‘when I missed half a bar in conducting the finale of the Sea Symphony. But your wonderful chorus pulled me through, and I think that only you, and they, know how near we were to disaster!’ He also alludes to the visit in VWL3542. Must be probably after the war but before 1928 when they moved from Cheyne Walk.
