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 £1.35 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 will reopen on 1 October 2026. 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 Ralph Wedgwood
Letter No.: VWL136
[July 1904]
My dear Randolph
The fact that Amos1 has first written to me moves me to write to you. His letter was mostly unintelligible referring as it did to a letter which I had written him and of which I had entirely forgotten the contents. He is coming home on July 23rd. Now I know that I’ve got to be in London on the 24th as I am examining a girls school2 in music on that day! Couldn’t you nip up to London and we would amuse ourselves together?
Crompton3 has been to the whole ‘Ring’ and on Sunday morning after ‘Gotterdamerung’ he was in such an exalted frame of mind that he wrote a letter to Fraülein Ternina4 who had been acting Brunnhilde to tell her how much he admired her and to ask when she was going to do Isolde – to this he got a most gracious answer!
Trevy5 came to tea the other day and was very pleasant – he is much mellower than he used to be. As to my own stuff, I go to the Museum6 nearly every day and copy Purcell out of an old manuscript7 – I am editing it for the Purcell Society.
[Incomplete]
1. Maurice Amos was coming back from Egypt.
2. VW taught at James Allen’s Girl’s School in West Dulwich from 1903 to 1904 when he was succeeded by Gustav Holst, who thus started the teaching career he maintained thereafter. See Michael Short, Gustav Holst: the man and his music, p.50.
3. Crompton Llewellyn Davies.
4. Milka Ternina, the Croatian soprano.
5. R.C. Trevelyan
6. The British Museum. VW had been asked to edit the Welcome Odes for the Purcell Society edition. The work appeared in Purcell Society Vols XV (1905) and XVIII (1910) – See Catalogue of Works 1905/8 and 1910/2.
7. British Library, R.M.20.h.8.
