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.

Applications are also open for the Foundation’s £6,000 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

Image for the Tweet beginning: A new edition of the Twitter feed image.

Vaughan Williams Foundation

A new edition of the vocal score for Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony is now available.
It retains rehearsal marks but also adds bar numbers to assist choirs using a mixture of both old and new scores.

Details here: https://bit.ly/433Mssl

Image for the Tweet beginning: The funding deadline is approaching Twitter feed image.

Vaughan Williams Foundation

The funding deadline is approaching for our postgraduate bursaries.

Awards up to £6K are made to talented students accepted on their first taught MA courses in composition, who intend to follow careers as composers.

Deadline – April 12. Details on our website.

Piatti Quartet

Happy St. Patrick’s Day ☘️ extend it a few days more by experiencing Ina Boyle’s wistfully beautiful SQ this Wednesday, 18:45, Hall One, @KingsPlace!

🎫 Find out more http://bit.ly/rushhourlates

@HeritageIrish @CMCIreland @IrelandEmbGB @InaBoyleSoc @VWFndn @JIrelandtrust

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

No bad orchestral music… or bad wine this #weekend please! 🍷

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

A less romantic look at elements of a composer’s life here…

According to the @bankofengland Inflation Calculator £1 in 1901 is worth £101.15 today! So this was a decent fee for a 29 year old who hadn’t found fame yet…

Vaughan Williams Foundation

Find out more about the funding we provide to support composers and post-grad students of composition here 👇

Image for the Tweet beginning: From the @thetimes in 1958. Twitter feed image.

Vaughan Williams Foundation

From the @thetimes in 1958.

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Vaughan Williams Foundation

We admire this example of RVW sticking up for the intellectual health of the nation! 💪

And would John Masefield, TS Eliot, RVW et al consider social media “an entirely retrograde step”… what they would make of it??

And of the fact a first class stamp now costs £1.35??

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Christian Hoskins

Late night listening: Vaughan Williams’s song cycle On Wenlock Edge. Recordings by Ian Partridge and John Mark Ainsley. It’s been too long since I played this wonderfully moving music.

Twitter feed video.

SOMM RECORDINGS

.@RGCWbaritone and Susie Allan in the studio for their recording of George Butterworth’s “Roving in the Dew” from their #VaughanWilliams #BirthdayGarland. Full album out 15 March: http://listn.fm/birthdaygarland

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