The orchestra paints a calm scene – blue skies, some clouds – and then a rising song. It’s the skylark, a bird of the open farm and of the heath. Its song, sung only by the male, is delivered in

In a longer take on the traditional carol, English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams made a ‘fantasia’ on three carols from southern England to create an atmospheric work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra. Given its premiere at the Three Choirs Festival

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 1910 Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis was his consummate mix of all that interested him: folksong and the glories of English music from earlier centuries and their modal scales. His form was the 17th century

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) took British music out of its German mindset and gave it its own voice. His 150th anniversary will occur on 12 October and a new version of one of his most famous pieces lets us hear

Although Ralph Vaughan Williams was an avowed atheist, he greatly bemoaned the state of church music in England. As he writes, “It ought no longer to be true anywhere that the most exalted moments of a church-goer’s week are associated

Ralph Vaughan Williams enjoyed excellent health throughout his life, and at the age of 85 he has just completed the piano score of his new opera Thomas the Rhymer. He also planned two song cycles for voice and piano, to

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ quintessential work for violin and for the summer is The Lark Ascending. We are so familiar with its trilling and rising skylark, personified by the violin, who takes flight above a quiet chamber orchestra. Vaughan was inspired

The American visionary poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was one of the transitional writers between transcendentalism and realism and his works reflect both points of view. He is considered the ‘father of free verse’ and his non-sectarian poems and his views