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).
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.
Applications for funding are now open. Ensembles, organisations and individuals are invited to apply.
The Foundation also offers annual Vaughan Williams Bursaries for postgraduate composition students.
RVW150
12 October 2022 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the launch of this Foundation and #RVW150 celebrations continued into the summer of 2023.
Find out more about the composer and explore some of the projects which happened in the anniversary year
READ THE LATEST
Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
This episode of @MusicMagazine’s All the Right Notes podcast, examines the phenomenon of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, and its vast popularity.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
“It’s really wartime music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night in the ambulance wagon at Ecoivres” – Vaughan Williams on his Symphony No. 3, A Pastoral Symphony.
📻 Listen to it here performed by the @LPOrchestra: https://bit.ly/4aZU3Lz
Boston Symphony
@bostonsymphony
We honor the life of conductor Sir Andrew Davis who passed away last weekend. Sir Andrew was a regular guest conductor with us starting in 1976. As seen in this clip of him conducting Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony, he brought such passion and artistry to the stage.
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
“A work not only English to the marrow, but also, at a single stroke, renewed and redefined what ‘English music’ itself meant” – @MusicMagazine on Vaughan Williams’ No. 2, A London Symphony.
📖 Read the article here: https://bit.ly/3vJvKm9
Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Regular @BBCSSO collaborator Andrew Manze discusses bringing the work of one of his favourite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, to new audiences 👇
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
📣 Funding deadline May 1.
We support performances, research, films and publishing furthering the knowledge and understanding of the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Apply by May 1, for work taking place after August 1.
Details here: https://bit.ly/3U4BM8K
Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be taking snapshots of RVW’s 9 symphonies 🎼
Starting with A Sea Symphony – an hour-long work for soprano, baritone, chorus and large orchestra written by Ralph Vaughan Williams between 1903 and 1909. 1/3
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
📣 Funding deadline approaching!
We support performances, research, films and publishing furthering the knowledge and understanding of the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Apply by May 1 for work taking place after August 1.
Details here: https://bit.ly/441zNXq
Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
Ralph Vaughan Williams – an old-fashioned nationalist or a trailblazing modernist?
Welsh academic, pianist, and writer @RCeriOwen introduces the composer in an article for our website here: https://vaughanwilliamsfoundation.org/discover/versions-of-vaughan-williams/
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Vaughan Williams Foundation
@vwfndn
This letter from Vaughan Williams to the Northern Echo seems to demonstrate that every generation has concerns about what impact modernisation will have on creativity.
We wonder what RVW would have made of AI?!
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 Anthony Scott
Letter No.: VWL2296
The White Gates,
Dorking,
Surrey.
14th November, 1951
Dear Tony
I am sending your Sinfonietta to Boyd Neel with an accompanying letter.
If he won’t do it we must try someone else. I certainly think your score is improved.1
Yrs
R. Vaughan Williams
Anthony Scott, Esq.,
“The Cedars”,
Horton,
nr Slough.
1. See earlier letter VWL2286.
