Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1957

Ralph Vaughan Williams was born October 12^th, 1872 at the village of Down Apney in Gloucestershire. He is known as one of the most active campaigners for English music and between 1903 and 1913, Vaughan Williams collected around 800 folk tunes from singers throughout England [1]. His first contact with folk song came in 1904 when he heard a shepherd singing “Through Bushes and Briars”; notably one of the most beautiful English folk songs. From that time onward, he devoted himself to the collecting of folk songs and used them as the foundation on which he built the structure of his own works [2].

Together with his friend Cecil Sharp, he strove to bring back folksongs into the everyday lives of the English people. Like Sharp, Williams applied his research by contributing songs to the Journal of the Folk-Song Society and held public lecture-recitals [1]. He served on the committees of the English Folk Dance Society and English Folk-Song Society (EFSS), of which Williams and other folksong collectors founded in 1898. The EFSS was dedicated to the study and preservation of England’s orally transmitted songs and dances. Following the death of Cecil Sharp, the English Folk Dance Society and English Folk-Song Society merged to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society, with Ralph Vaughan Williams sitting as president [3].