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
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 Ursula Wood to Beryl Lock
Letter No.: VWL2214
Saturday [21 April 1951]
…. Thank you so much for the heavenly flowers – they really do the gardeners credit. I brought some down here.
Life has been hectic. Covent Garden rehearsals going full out, & the Dorking Festival, & Mrs V.W. frightfully ill – no-one can discover what it is, but she has temperatures varying between 102 and 97, & has lost the use of her hands – it’s wretched for her, particularly just now.1 Ralph is managing well, though this week has been rather too much of a good thing – leaving the house at 8.40 – Rehearsals 10-1.30, sandwiches in the car, conducting rehearsals from 2.45 – 5.30, & then an evening concert – but now its only Covent Garden.2 Of course it’s thrilling, & exasperating and satisfying & unsatisfying – but it’s doing pretty well, & not too unlike what he intended – the orchestra is good, & the singers know their music, but he wants more acting.
The major worry just now is Appolyon [sic], whether he can possibly fall dead in a 3ft mask, & if so – how to get him off stage without ruining his wings! It’s all set for Thursday, Ralph, Gil, & Mrs Curle3 will dine with me first, (his party) & we are going to a party given by the management afterwards. Then you shall have your evening coat back! I have been grateful for it.
I wore my blue American (Hattie Carnegie4) dress to make my speech in. It went well, & I enjoyed doing it – in fact I think public speaking may be a taste as easily acquired as a taste for gin – & everyone was very nice about it. I was on the Milton – Handel night, so the matter was easy.5
Gil came to dinner here – so did Kathleen Long,6 who was playing – frightfully pleased with herself as she had made her own dress – so I had plenty of support, & Ralph was pleased with me.
All these activities have rather interfered with gardening. I don’t know how that was so – but everything is so behind this year.
The Martels were in London on Monday, so I had them & their parents to dinner – not a word of English among them.7 There were 6 of us, & 7 of them, & then dancing & singing, all very gay & bilingual – but I did rather tremble for the floor!
No news otherwise.
Thank you so much –
Love
U
1. Adeline died shortly afterwards on 10th May.
2. The first performance of VW’s opera Pilgrim’s Progress at Covent Garden was on 26 April 1951.
2. i.e. Gilmour Jenkins and Adeline’s sister, Cordelia Curle.
3. Hattie Carnegie was a well-known Viennese-born New York dress designer.
4. The Milton-Handel night at the Leith Hill Musical Festival was Tuesday 27 April, when Gilmour Jenkins was also present.
5. Kathleen Long, the English pianist.
6. The Martels were presumably friends, possibly refugees, known to both Ursula and her mother.
