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 Ursula Vaughan Williams to Christopher Morris (OUP)
Letter No.: VWL3466
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
February 17th 1957.
Dear Mr Morris,
We have both been through this most carefully, added a few stage directions, a little more dialogue and made clear the rearrangement of the last few numbers. As far as I can tell it is now complete and workable. We hope to go to some rehearsals soon at the Academy, then, if anything is not absolutely clear we can add, subtract, put in another couplet or change any word in the spoken dialogue. By the time they have got all three acts to the stage rehearsals we shall see if it is all as good as can be.
Yours sincerely,
Ursula Vaughan Williams
We also return the score they had at Cheltenham, & very kindly lent me to work from.1
1. John Neve had conducted a performance of The Poisoned Kiss, Catalogue of Works 1936/4, at Cheltenham School in April 1956,which had stimulated VW to buy the copyright in the libretto from Evelyn Sharp so that he and Ursula could revise it and make a new performing version of the opera incorporating spoken dialogue and a number of cuts (see Catalogue of Works p.157). The new version was performed at the Royal Academy of Music on 11th July 1957. See Kennedy, Works of Vaughan Williams, p.332.
