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 G.O. May (OUP)
Letter No.: VWL3101
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
July 1st 1955.
Dear Mr May,
We must try and do something about Mrs Child.1 I am not quite sure whether the £300 was for words and music, or only for the music, but as I suppose we could now get nothing for the words from America, we had better divide the £300 into two halves. I suggest that I should send her £150 myself, explaining the circumstances. This would not upset your accounts and would be simpler. I shall then see if I can get her elected as a member of the P.R.S. They are so ridiculously pompous in all their methods; after all, they are merely a collecting agency, but they treat membership of their society as a sort of Holy Brotherhood to which one can only be initiated by Bell Book and candle. Let me know if you approve of my scheme & I will then act immediately.2
Yours sincerely,
R. Vaughan Williams
1. The widow of Harold Child, the librettist of Hugh the Drover, who had also written the words for The New Commonwealth. He had died in 1945.
2. This concerned a payment from the Performing Right Society concerning The New Commonwealth, Catalogue of Works 1940/3/3. May replied that the payment was in respect of the music only. He approved of VW’s proposal to send £150 to Mrs Child and offered to contact the Performing Right Society about her being accepted as a member.
