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
Vaughan Williams Scholarships
We are pleased to announce that four scholarships of £8,000 each have been awarded to postgraduate students of composition.
Congratulations to our 2026 Vaughan Williams Scholars: Patrick Gorry, Scarlett Henderson, Donnchadh Mac Aodha and Dominic Wright.
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.
Funding
Applications
Since 2023 we have awarded over £1.2 million to composer projects. 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.
Applications are currently open. We welcome applications from ensembles, organisations and individuals.
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 Alan Frank (OUP)
Letter No.: VWL3343
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
June 16th 1956.
Dear Frank,
I do not like new clothes either for myself or my works, so please may we keep to the red-on-buff. I was sorry when you bound Antartica (sic) in snow & ice.1
While I am about it, do you think we can do anything about pushing the Christmas Carol ballet? Bernard Shore said he was coming to see you about it, but I do not know whether he did. If he wanted more singing for his show we could easily add a few carols and folk songs. If the work is ever printed we could add footnotes to the effect “here the carol XYZ may be introduced at the discretion of the producer.”
Yours,
RVW
PS. Is the vn sonata out yet?
1. This paragraph refers presumably to the publication of the full score of the Eighth Symphony.
2. Bernard Shore was director of the Rural Schools Music Association, The following January Frank wrote to VW explaining that On Christmas Night was too short to work in the commercial theatre but suggested that the English Folk Dance and Song Society or BBC television might be approached. According to a note in the file VW apparently replied that he quite understood and ‘if Telly wants to do it, I must put up with it’. VW’s suggestion about the interpolation of carols was carried out – see VWL3476.
