His Concerto for Tuba is an amazing piece, as are his Six English Folk Songs solo.

England was sometimes referred to as “the land without music” yet it was the first country in europe to use thirds and sixths as consonant intervals in polyphonic textures. The use of these intervals was then referred to on the continent as “Contenance Angloise” or the “English Manner”

Loved this. RVW...I think I have everything by him. So much & so much variety...love, love his stuff...& his politics.

I always go for Sir Adrian Boult recordings. He was there at the right time to ask the composer directly. The 5th Symphony is my favourite. Pilgrim's Progress is up there as well. Great video!

Thanks for this video. I've just been to hear the 4th and loved it, now curious to hear more. BTW I really enjoy your style of presentation. Fascinating facts delivered with touches of humour.

Well researched and thank you.

Thank you so much for putting my request in your video! This is really useful context for our set work, on wenlock edge. Your videos are really interesting and informative.

My favorite Vaughn Williams symphony is his 5th. Thanks again for you labors.

I loved this overview. You really have a gift!!!

Many, many thanks Thomas!!!! My favourite composer ever!!!

Wonderful video, so informative. I heard Norfolk Rhapsody No1 for the first time on New Years Eve and was blown away by it. That area of the countryside and the Fens is very familiar to me and it's been a delight discovering Vaughan Williams' joy of it. I'm also learning viola so it was such a surprise to hear a viola solo in Norfolk 1. Really glad you mentioned the subject here too.

Thank you! Very informative and entertaining.

My favorite pieces by him are his 8th and 9th symphonies. Brilliant pieces. They lift me up with their sheer creativity.

Very interesting overview of my beloved RVW!

All of my tuba friends are obsessed with his tuba concerto.

Tanks for your information congratulations from Mexico City

Thank you so very much for this fascinatingly impertinent biography on the man. My spouse and I have fallen in love with his landscape genre pieces and wanted to know something of what lay behind that. Thank you, again!

Thanx, Tom🌹🌹🌹

THANK YOU.A GREAT TALK.

Excellent summary! If you ever amend this presentations, please do include the magnificent 5th Symphony, which greatly heartened the British and free world from WW2 onward -- plus its dedication to Jean Sibelius, who also should be cited as a parallel 1st Symphony inspiration.

Vaughan Williams is one of my favorite composers. I first became acquainted with him through an arrangement of "Linden Lea" in band.

The greatest of all.

A note as a person from a Protestant background who knows a fair few hymns - Holst and Vaughan Williams's hymn arrangements are still around for a reason, they're quite possibly the best ones out there (Vaughan Williams's "Kingsfold" and Holst's "In the Bleak Midwinter" are easily my top two of all time)

That's one thing I like about your videos, I get to hear the correct pronunciation of names I've only read but have never heard.

I've just found your great channel! There's lots to discover ;o) A suggestion for a future composer profile: Arnold Bax - a south London boy who spent his life pretending to be Irish; an Irish Republican sympathiser who went on to be knighted and became Composer Of The King's Music.

Could you do a video on francisco tarrega or fernando sor? Two spanish guitarists. Also, i am so glad i found your channel. You give so much info in one video that i could do in a weeks of reasearch. Thank you!

Happy B-day, Ralph Vaughan Williams 🎂 💐

BEHOLD...THE..CEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ! ! ! !🐟🐋🐡⛵⚓🌊. I also really enjoy Symphony #1, I have the Sir Adrian Boult EMI box set. I think I'm going to revisit this music.

The subtitles are extraordinary !! eg. The Composer Parry is written as Perry and Vaughan (Williams) is written as Vaughn.

RVW used to collect folk songs in my home town of Horsham, Sussex, at the turn of the twentieth century. He lived in Dorking, ten miles north of here, for much of his life, and his family home was Leith Hill Place, near Dorking. I grew up in a village called Kingsfold, where RVW used to collect folk songs at the local pub, the 'Wheatsheaf'. The tune 'Dives and Lazarus' (as in 'Five Variants Of...') is actually called 'Kingsfold'. Many of the villagers from whom he collected songs, with his primitive Phonograph recording machine, still have families in this area. His great uncle was Charles Darwin, and the familiy were related to the Wedgewoods (as in pottery). Lucy Broadwood (as in the pianos) lived in Rusper, between Horsham and Dorking, and she too collected folks songs at that time, along with Cecil Sharp. What a treasure-trove of music would have been lost forever had they not donw so. I believe it was RVW's mother (or possibly his wife?) who blamed the loss of the oral tradition, whereby folk songs were passed down the generations, on the recent Education Act, which taught everybody to read and write. I love the description of RVW as an old man (but I can't remember who described him thus) as "A haystack of a man - like an old sofa with the stuffing coming out in places". This would be a reflection of his typically British untidy dress style. Maurice Ravel commented that RVW "couldn't tell the difference between good food and bad food" - another British characteristic! Purely co-incidentally, RVW has always been one of my favourite composers. For some strange reason, I am always drawn towards 'modal' music - particularly the Dorian mode, and indeed the Mixolydian, but anything with a flattened seventh. PS it's 'Vaughan' Williams, not 'Von' Williams! ;)

Bravo! Your talk is very informative. It's even-handed while being enthusiastic. RVW was a truly great composer. He was spiritually-minded without being religious, which you made crystal clear.

I spent 6 years of my life in England, 5 of them singing in choirs with a wide repertoire. Also sang some Vaughan Williams, both choral and solo works. Never once corrected anyone my assumption that the gh wasn't silent. This will keep me up in shame tonight.

He was very helpful to the next generation of British composers e.g. Benjamin Britten, (Although they didn't really care for one another's music) and Michael Tippett. There is a lovely story about RVW whilst in The USA met a young composer who showed him one of his own very modernistic works. RVW looked at the score and then handed it back to him saying "If you ever think of a tune do let me know!" On the other hand he (unsurprisingly) admired the work of Samuel Barber. Barber played and sang his own "Dover Beach" to RVW , who apparently said to him "You've just about nailed it, I tried to set that poem myself but just couldn't get it right"

I'd love to see one of these on Percy Granger

bravo

The 5th with LSO / Previn 💙

I'm glad you liked the Sea Symphony, my own personal preferences are Nºs 4 & 6 but with slightly different reasons for each. I hope one day you get around to Charles Villers Stanford, he ended up teaching a lot of the next generation of British Composers, though not Benjamin Brittain, that was left for Frank Bridge another interesting British composer from that late Victorian/Edwardian/WWI transition period. Of Stanfords music, the 3rd Symphony 'Irish' and 3rd Irish Rhapsody (For Cello & Orchestra) are the ones I keep going back to.

Thanks for this! Can it really be that you haven't yet done Elgar and Britten? :)

It'd be great if you'd consider doing Henri Dutilleux. A composer who defied "isms" and who wrote some of the most sensual, most well crafted music I can think of.

Request: (if you haven’t done a video on him yet) Conlon Nancarrow

Video request:Leopold godowsky,Franz schubert, carlo gesualdo

Can you do one for Arnold Bax? thanks!

Very good. One thing, though. Percy Grainger was British (not English) by virtue of the fact that Australians were British until 1948. In some ways Australia was a fifth 'home country' after England, Scotland Wales and (Northern) Ireland. Also, RVW didn't consider the Sea Symphony his first when he wrote it. In 1911, when George Butterworth suggested he write a symphony (the London as it became) RVW responded that he'd never written a symphony and didn't intend to write one. Butterworth persuaded him, though - and it's clear that he also regarded the London as RVW's first. The programme note for the first performance of the Sea actually say that the word 'symphony' refers to the symphonic way RVW had edited Whitman's text. Things changed only in 1956 when his publisher insisted on a number for his new symphony. By that time Decca had recorded 7 'symphonies' without numbers, so RVW grudgingly agreed to 'No. 8'. Also, Elgar was the person most responsible for the rebirth of English music.

What is the authoritative source on pronouncing his first name? As one who works in radio, we always strive to find the pronunciation of a name according to the person themselves, even when it contradicts with the way the person's heritage might call for.

Concerto for Two Pianos!

Video request: Pancho Vladigerov, the patriarch of Bulgarian classical music

What were the composers called who came after the cerealists? The granolists? Also, I think Bruckner wrote the greatest Symphony No. 0.

Hard to say that Tchaikovsky 1st Symphony was not quite good. Winter Dreams is a lovely piece of cake!

Folk song suite

Who is this von williams? A Dutchman?

Your history is interesting but I found myself waiting for your screen "jumps" where you are constantly moving position . on the screen. I couldnt watch this for more than a few minutes so a shame..

Can I upvote Oliveros and Bruch?

1:07 does anyone else remember veggie tales?

Its SIR HUBERT PARRY NOT PERRY. He was born in Gloucestershire NOT NEAR WALES.

I didn't know you weren't supposed to pronounce the g in Vaughan!

RVE started to write his Sea Symphony three years earlier than the 8th by Mahler, but Mahler finished his 8th three years before Williams...so, it depends on your perspective of "which one goes first" The first in be written as who started to write before or who finished it first... Let's say: it is a tie

Anglicans hired RVW to edit their hymnal. Took him 2 yr. He wasn't religious but they got him anyway. Working with some of the greatest tunes (yes, some others were really bad) positively influenced the composer. You speak of disconnect? Try Herbert Howells, who cranked out lots of Anglican church music. The Anglicans got their musicians by their musical merit, not their religious views. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Anglican_church_composers Wonder how many, out of all of these, were devout Anglicans? G. Finzi, for instance, was Jewish. Some of the Anglican music in its earlier days got some of their music by hiring Catholic composers. More on disconnect. How about the church music of bohemian Schubert? The religious carol O Holy Night was by A Adam, with words by Cappeau, both secularists.

“Sucked”?

I stg all famous english people are related

Veggietales fan?

Do I see a Peanuts comic?

Actually, the greatest First Symphony is Brahms'. Without question.