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 will open on 4 June. 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
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 Gustav Holst
Letter No.: VWL356
[Summer 1918]
Dear V.
I’ve not written to you ever since I came out this time (nor for the matter of fact you to me). But I keep posted up in all your doings & I see your letters.
I wonder if you will go to Holland – I shd feel more inclined for the naval job myself – but still there is the 3rd alternative I hope, of your stopping at Morley – when all this is over it will I believe [be] the people who’ve kept the lamp alight who will count as the heroes.
The war has brought me strange jobs – can you imagine me in charge of 200 horses!! That’s my job at present – I was dumped down on to it straight away, and before I had time to find out which were horses and which were wagons I found myself in the middle of a retreat – as a matter of fact we had a very easy time over that – only one horse killed so we were lucky.
At present I am down near the sea undergoing a ‘gunnery course’ – more of a rest than anything else but it’s given me an opportunity of learning something about my gun (among other things.) Having been trained entirely as a 6” Howitzer man I’ve been bunged into a 60pdr!
I wish I cd have been at Thaxted – but that will all come after the war – I shd be very sorry for you to leave Morley & Thaxted and all that – but it wd be interesting to see if you have established a tradition & if it will carry on without you.
Let me have a letter when you can. What are you writing?
Yrs
RVW
address 2/Lt RVW R G A
141 Heavy Bty
B E F
France