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 new 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, 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).

THE FOUNDATION

Funding

VWF supports the work of British/Irish composers from the last 100 years, as well as projects which further the knowledge and understanding of the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of the work of Ursula Vaughan Williams.

We welcome applications from ensembles, organisations and individuals.

VWF also offers annual £6,000 Vaughan Williams Bursaries to postgraduate composition students – applications for the 2023 Bursaries are currently being accepted

Find out more

RVW150

12 October 2022 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the launch of this Foundation but #RVW150 celebrations continue into the summer of 2023.


Find out more about the composer and explore some of the projects going on in the anniversary year

RVW150

READ THE LATEST

Vaughan Williams Foundation

We love these words from George Trevelyan to a young Ralph Vaaughan Williams. Find the full letter on our website: https://t.co/rdHUSeek0F

Vaughan Williams Foundation

“Ralph Vaughan Williams created important works in most major musical forms and genres. His involvement in a range of musical organisations, and the support he provided to younger composers, made him a central figure in British musical life” – @britishlibrary

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Vaughan Wlliams had a tendency to “characteristically avoid all honours”, but in 1954 he accepted the Henry Elias Howland Memorial Prize.

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Apply now! Applications for the 2023 Ralph Vaughan Williams #student composition bursaries are open until April 14, 2023. Details and applications here 👇https://t.co/QKOipwoC71 #Funding

Vaughan Williams Foundation

📷 Our website has a fabulous selection of photographs of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at every stage of his life. Browse them here: https://t.co/lEw7SlmNN3

Vaughan Williams Foundation

🌷 With spring on the way #holidayseason is on the horizon! We love the sound of this trip to #Greece documented in a postcard from Ursula Vaughan Williams.

Vaughan Williams Foundation

“It’s a small boat with only 16 on board. I wish you were here to get something out of them – I can’t, I can’t even flirt with the ladies. There’s only one possible and she’s fearfully dull. Also she much prefers the chief engineer” – letter from RVW. https://t.co/Lt3R5HOOMp

Vaughan Williams Foundation

As a musician he ‘puts you through your paces’ – Viola player Philip Dukes. What do you love about Ralph Vaughan Williams’ music?

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was one of the great composers of the twentieth century, a consummate teacher and unstintingly generous – to others and to many musical and charitable purposes – throughout his life. Find out more here 👇 https://t.co/G0bT79RiD8

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Have you listened to RVW’s Sea Symphony lately? Does it make the ‘hair on your neck stand up and take notice’?! Read more of writer and conductor @MystroJoe‘s musings on RVW’s wonderful Sea Symphony, as told to journalist @JayHandelman, here: https://t.co/RXdVWZPPH3

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of Britain’s finest symphonists, with nine to his name, spanning fifty years of his creative life. There’s something for everyone among these works – which is your favourite? https://t.co/WkFgoeq8iF

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.

Search the letters

Letter of the Day

Letter from Joseph Szigeti to Ralph Vaughan Williams

Letter No.: VWL3600

Palos Verdes Estates,
California

October 27, 1957

Dear Dr. Williams:

I was very happy to listen to Mitropoulos’ superb performance of your F minor Symphony on your 85th birthday, to which I send you my belated congratulations.
I would also like you to know what great pleasure – or rather, anticipated pleasure – I derived from the playing through of your Housman Song Cycle, (alas, without the soprano part,) and how much I am looking forward to trying them out and playing them with a congenial singer sometime next season.1
With best remembrances,
Yours sincerely,

Joseph Szigeti

This season too I will be opening my XXth Century sonata cycle with your sonata: in four more places (eleven up to now): at – Princeton University, Univers. of Indiana, Vassar College and Williams College Williamstown (Mass.)  I will record your sonata on tape for Stockholm Radio on May 15th and will try to get a copy for you.1 My latest USA Columbia record consists of four contemporary works: The Ravel & Hindemith (1935), The 1947 Prokofieff Solo sonata and his early 5 Songs without words arranged by himself for violin and piano.

1. Along the Field: Eight Housman Songs for voice and violin, Catalogue of Works 1927/1.
2. Sonata in A minor for violin and piano, Catalogue of Works 1954/4, dedicated to Frederick Grinke.

His music continues to inspire us. Its incredible breadth of style and outlook seems especially important in our polarised times.

CHRISTOPHER GLYNN, artistic director, Ryedale Festival

Among his acts were countless kindnesses, known only to himself and the persons concerned. He gave continuous encouragement to younger men. He had the dignified humility of a great man, and was utterly unself-seeking.

SIR ARTHUR BLISS, conductor

I cannot stress enough how important this organisation’s work is, what a profound difference it is making, and how it has enabled so many to develop creatively and give new work a platform. Vaughan Williams himself would surely be so proud of this legacy. 

ZOE MARTLEW, composer and cellist

It is necessary to know facts, but music will enable you to see past facts to the very essence of things in a way which science cannot do. The arts are the means by which we can look through the magic casements and see what lies beyond. 

RVW, letter to the children of Swaffham Primary School, 1958