Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Harnham Down is a lesser-known orchestral work that reflects his characteristic connection to the English countryside. The piece features a pastoral quality, drawing on elements of folk melody and simple harmonic language...

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus is a poignant and richly textured work for string orchestra and harp, composed in 1939. Drawing from the English folk melody “Dives and Lazarus,” which narrates the biblical...

Vaughan Williams composed three Norfolk Rhapsodies in 1905 and 1906, basing them on folk tunes he had collected around the Wash. But only the first of them has remained in the repertory, relished as one of the composer's fondest and most ravishing...

Following the composition of Five Mystical Songs in 1911, Vaughan Williams began to compose a smaller scale piece, which was completed in 1914. However, World War I delayed the presentation of the song cycle until 1920. In setting the four hymns to...

An Oxford Elegy is a work for narrator, small mixed chorus and small orchestra, written by Ralph Vaughan Williams between 1947 and 1949. It uses portions of two poems by Matthew Arnold, "The Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis". The first performance took place...

First composed between 1897-1898, it was premiered in April 1901 and is considered one of Vaughan William's earliest orchestral works. This attractive work already shows evidence of the composer's emerging musical style and sure grasp of orchestral...

Flos Campi: Suite for Solo Viola, Small Chorus, and Small Orchestra is a composition by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, completed in 1925. Its title is Latin for "flower of the field." It is neither a concerto nor a choral piece, although it...

REPRINT SERIES Epithalamion (which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as ''A nuptial song or poem in praise of the bride and bridegroom'') is a large-scale cantata from 1957 based on Edmund Spenser's love-poem of the same name: musically, it draws...

Considered one of the most recognized concerti for the Oboe, Vaughan Williams began working on his Oboe Concerto immediately upon completion of his Symphony No. 5 in D major. This pastoral piece is divided into three movements:1. Rondo Pastorale...