Born: October 12, 1872; Down Ampney, England
Nationality: English
Occupation: Composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an English composer who was born on October 12, 1872 and died on August 26, 1958.
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| Leith Hill Place, Vaughan Williams's childhood home |
His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular/religious vocal works, and orchestral works, including nine symphonies written over 60 years. His works, heavily influenced by Tudor music and English folk songs, played a decisive role in separating English music from the German-dominated musical style of the 19th century.
Born into a wealthy family with strong morality and a progressive social outlook, Vaughan Williams sought throughout his life to serve those around him and has a belief in making music as available as possible to everybody. He wrote many works for amateur and student performance.
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| Vaughan Williams (c.1920) |
He was a composer who found his musical direction late, and was unable to find his true musical direction until his late 30s. Meanwhile, his studies from 1907 to 1908, as a student of the French composer Maurice Ravel, helped him to establish his musical color and to escape his music from the influence of German music style.
Vaughan Williams is one of the most famous British symphony composers, whose symphony is known for its very wide range of musical moods, from stormy and passionate to tranquil, and from mysterious to exuberant.
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Vaughan Williams signing the guest book at Yale University (1954) |
Besides the symphony, his most famous concert pieces are "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" and "The Lark Ascending". His vocal works include hymns, folk-song arrangements and large-scale choral pieces. Although there are no popular operas, his ballet "Job: A Masque for Dancing" was successful and is often performed.
Two things in Vaughan Williams's personal life had a big impact on him. One of them was the First World War, in which he served in the military, which continued to influence on his emotion. The other one was a woman, who was much younger than his wife and whom he met after his marriage in his 60s. He was reinvigorated by a love affair with the woman, who later became his second wife.
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| Bust of Vaughan Williams by Marcus Cornish, Chelsea |
He continued composing throughout his seventies and eighties and wrote his last symphony a few months before his death. His works have continued to be performed as a concert repertoire among British composers, and all his major works and many of the minor ones have been recorded.
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Statue of Vaughan Williams by William Fawke, Dorking |
Thank you.
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