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.
Funding
Vaughan Williams Scholarships
Applications are now open for the 2026 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.
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.
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
Letter No.: VWL2090
The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.
4th October, 1950.
Dear Frank,
Müller Hartmann has sent me the enclosed note on my “Partita” which he thinks you may be able to make use of.
As you know the work is dedicated to him.
Yours sincerely,
R Vaughan Williams
(R. Vaughan Williams).
Alan Frank, Esq.,
Oxford University Press,
44, Conduit Street,
W.1.
R. Vaughan Williams: Partita for Double String Orchestra
Among Vaughan William’s works for strings the Partita ranks as high as his Tallis Fantasia. Whether the polyphonic texture of the Partita has necessitated the scoring for the two sets of strings, or whether the chosen medium has moulded the composer’s thoughts, – the contents and the instrumentation are inseparable. There are no clear-cut tunes in this music. Its beauty is at once haunting and elusive, and this is perhaps due to the singing character of the themes, and on the other hand to a freedom of rhythm that rejects the conventional formal patterns. Especially Vaughan Williams’s way of repeating expressive figures from the “wrong” beat mystifies the sense of time. The four movements, Prelude, Scherzo Ostinato, Intermezzo and Fantasia, are not loosely strung together. They are sections of an organic whole whose structural and atmospheric unity is immediately felt. The principal key is D minor which is significant for the prevailing mood though Vaughan Williams has his individual manner in producing a key-feeling. Here he does it merely with the first three notes of the scale. They are heard in halting rhythm at the very beginning of the Prelude, and they form also the nucleus of the two following movements. In the Scherzo Ostinato the composer himself seems to be haunted by an idée fixe and to be trying to get rid of it by violent counter strokes which in turn lead to harmonic clashes where bitonality for once makes sense. The Intermezzo has the sub-title “Homage to Henry Hall”.1 So the listener’s fancy may roam for a while; he will probably find it difficult to associate the characteristic pizzicato-accompaniment and the slow and passionate soli for the viola, the violin and the violoncello with the ball-room. Anyway, this movement also is unmistakably Vaughan Williams, and no concession is made to a lower taste. The Fantasia is remarkable for its energy, speed and fanatical counterpoint. It ends quietly.
1. The dance-band leader.
