Ralph Vaughan Williams
Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958) was one of the major English composres of the twentieth century. Strongly influenced by English traditional melodies, he was an important song collector before the First World War.
As well as incorporating traditional tunes into some of his compositions, he arranged a numbner of folk tunes as hymn tunes - especially in the English Hymnal of 1906 - and many of the folk carols included in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928) had been collected and/or arranged by RVW.
Near the end of his life he was joint editor of the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs; and of course the library of the English Folk Dance and Song Society bears his name.
We have recorded a number of songs collected by Vaughan Williams. At least one - John Reilly - was deciphered from a microfilm copy of his own rather spidery handwritten notation. But many have come to us via Roy Palmer's Folk songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams.