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 Stanford Robinson (BBC)
Letter No.: VWL3077
The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.
16th November, 1949.
Dear Stanford Robinson
Thank you so much for your letter. It was a great pleasure attending those rehearsals, and I thought that, good as the first performance was, the second was still better.1
As regards your point on Page 91 of the vocal score, you must remember that the turnkey has been set earlier in the Act to watch the “spy” and has fallen asleep, but that after the hubbub has all started he suddenly wakes up knowing nothing of what has happened and cries out, “The spy has escaped”, so I feel that that does not spoil the dramatic point of John’s line at all, indeed I think it adds to it, because the spy has not escaped.
This can only be tried out on stage and of course you quite rightly altered it for broadcasting.
I trust you entirely about the question of altering the orchestration on Pages 87 and 88.
As regards the male chorus in the same number – that has never come through musically and I fear we must write it off as a “bad debt”; but it adds to the general hubbub and excitement and I think if we took out the other vocal parts we should lose that. As a matter of fact the women also have a rather nice tune there which is never heard.
I should like to come to your rehearsal on November 24th or 27th if I possibly can. Not that I mistrust you in any way, but simply for the pleasure of the thing.2
Yrs
R Vaughan Williams
1. The first two of six broadcast performances of Hugh the Drover (Catalogue of Works 1924/2) had taken place on 29th and 31st October.
2. Further performances were to be broadcast on 27th December 1949, 10th, 13th March and 16th May 1950.
