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
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 open to ensembles, organisations and individuals.
The Foundation also offers annual Vaughan Williams Bursaries for postgraduate composition students.
Vaughan Williams Bursaries
Congratulations to the seven composers who have received the 2024 Vaughan Williams Bursaries towards their masters studies in composition.
Over 260 Bursaries have been awarded for postgraduate study since 1984. Applications for the 25/6 academic year will open in autumn 2024.
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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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Free #London concert!
Black Sun by @gavhiggins, supported by the VWF, will premier at Regents Hall on Oxford Street on November 16, at 7.30pm.
Gavin will give a pre-concert talk at 7pm and Outsliders Trombone Quartet and the @RCMLondon Trombone Choir will perform.
Stephanie Lamprea
@slampreasoprano
22 October at @soundscotland
Aud The Deep Minded, a new work by Joanna Nicholson that explores the psyche of the mystical viking Aud. Performing with Jo, Andy Saunders, & Alistair MacDonald! Thanks to @CreativeScots & @VWFndn for supporting the work. ✨
https://sound-scotland.co.uk/event/joanna-nicholson-the-deepminded
Piatti Quartet
@piattiquartet
🚨🚨SINGLE RELEASE🚨🚨
New music composed this year by @JosephPhibbs commissioned by us and RTF!
❤️ to @VWFndn
Premiered @PresteigneFest @Ryearts @KingsPlace
@BBCRadio3 @GramophoneMag @TheStradMag
An exquisitely beautifully crafted Cantilena
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Kevin Appleby
@kevinmappleby
@RVWtweets born OTD 1872, portrayed by sculptor David McFall in a monument in the entrance of @spireofdorking, and reflecting the composer’s long association with the #Surrey town
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
“Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound” – Ralph Vaughan Williams.
A thought for a #MondayMorning.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Celebrating an autumn birthday this #weekend? 🎂
Ursula Vaughan Williams alludes to Keats’ Ode To Autumn, in a letter to Michael Kennedy regarding RVW’s October birthday 🍂
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
The principal aims of the Vaughan Williams Foundation are to honour RVW’s desire to support his fellow composers, and also to make his own work widely accessible to the general public.
The VWF is now open for grant applications – find out how to apply via our website.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
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Tom Service experiences musical time travel as he listens to “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, with its magical interplay of ancient and modern.
📻 Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001dgcw
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Huge congratulations to Edmund Finnis and @clare_pianist who have won a @edisonsNL award for their album ‘Youth’! 👏
The album was commissioned with support from the RVW Trust (now the VWF) and recorded with @PENTATONEmusic.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
New Releases! Proud to support emerging composer Sam Rudd- Jones and these amazing players!
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 Maud Karpeles
Letter No.: VWL4865
From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.
[1936]
Dear Maud
I have to give a lecture on Folk song on Oct 23d & want to see if I can arrange for Elizabeth Darbyshire-Jones to illustrate & for you to hear her – As she sings chiefly the N.F. 1ones my lecture ought to be about them – would it be very impertinent if I stole your thunder in this way – & further still would you beef me with some facts.
– How are you – we haven’t met for ages
The enclosed may amuse you, they are part of “Joanna Southcotts Box”2
Yrs
RVW
1. i.e. Songs from Newfoundland, which had been collected and published by Karpeles.
2. Joanna Southcott was a nineteenth-century prophetess whose ‘box’ contained her prophecies. The enclosure is not present.
