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
Applications Open
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.
We welcome applications from ensembles, organisations and individuals.
Our new Trustees
Joining the Board
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Sam Wigglesworth, Harriet Wybor and Raymond Yiu as new Trustees, bringing with them a wealth of experience and a passion for music.
We are so grateful for their commitment to the Foundation and look forward to working with them to develop VWF for the future.
Find out more about the faces behind the VWF and our work.
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.
Funding
Vaughan Williams Scholarships
4 scholarships of £8,000 each are awarded annually to postgraduate students of composition
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.
Congratulations to our 2025 Vaughan Williams Scholars: Tom Burkhill, Lucy Holmes, André Faria Serra and Elliott Park.
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.: VWL2424
The White Gates,
Dorking.
June 3rd 1952.
Dear Frank,1
Here are the quotations from S.A.2 I have put the sources, but I do not want them published. I am leaving the score at the office and have arranged for Roy Douglas to call for it.
Yrs
R. Vaughan Williams
Sinfonia Antarctica
I Prelude.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite,
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent….
Neither to change nor falter nor repent,
This is to be
Good, great & joyous, beautiful and free.
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
Shelley. Prometheus Unbound.
II Scherzo
There go the ships
And there is that Leviathan
Whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.
Psalm 253
III Landscape.
Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain’s brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts.
Coleridge. Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.
IV Intermezzo
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Donne. The Sun Rising.
V. Epilogue
I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew that we took them, things have come out against us. Therefore we have no cause for complaint.
Captain Scott’s Diary.
1. Music Editor in succession to Norman Peterkin (1947); Head of Music from 1954 until his retirement in 1975.
2. Sinfonia Antartica (Catalogue of Works 1952/2).
3. The quotation is actually from Psalm 104.
