Welcome to the Vaughan Williams Foundation – one of the foremost sources of funding for recent and contemporary music in the UK
The Vaughan Williams Foundation is a new grant-giving charity which upholds the values and vision of the celebrated composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and his wife Ursula Vaughan Williams.
Our principal aims are to honour RVW’s desire to support his fellow composers, and to help make his own work widely accessible to the general public.
VWF was founded in 2022, 150 years after the composer’s birth, and brings together the two charities originally set up by Ralph (RVW Trust) and Ursula (Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust).
Funding
VWF supports the work of British/Irish composers from the last 100 years, as well as projects which further the knowledge and understanding of the life and music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and of the work of Ursula Vaughan Williams.
Applications for funding will open on 4 June. Ensembles, organisations and individuals are invited to apply.
The Foundation also offers annual Vaughan Williams Bursaries for postgraduate composition students.
RVW150
12 October 2022 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the launch of this Foundation and #RVW150 celebrations continued into the summer of 2023.
Find out more about the composer and explore some of the projects which happened in the anniversary year
READ THE LATEST
THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Featured Letter
Get to know the man and his music
RVW’s wide-ranging correspondence – with family, pupils, fellow composers, conductors and performers – paints an intriguing portrait of the man, as well as providing fascinating insights into his major preoccupations: musical, personal and political.
Our searchable database includes over 5000 annotated transcriptions of his correspondence all available to read online.
Letter of the Day
Letter from Ursula Vaughan Williams to Michael and Eslyn Kennedy
Letter No.: VWL3315
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
March 16th 1958
Dearest Michael & Eslyn,
How angelic of you to remember my birthday, & to send the perfect book for me to take to Ischia. Thank you, thank you.
I had a lovely birthday party on Thursday with Bill Brown singing Gerald’s posthumous songs Till Earth Outwears.1 With Howard2 playing, then Jean playing ‘her Dittersdorf’,3 & then B Brown singing Ralph’s Blake songs with Janet Craxton playing4– then food & drink – about fifty of us, and everything fine. Then on the real day, Ralph & I went to the Jardin des Gourmets for dinner. Its where he took me to lunch the day we first met – twenty years ago!
How lovely to see you on Friday.5 We don’t quite know how to live till then – trumpet & kettledrum to while away the time (or wile? Yeats is upstairs) but we’re going to try Round the world in 80 days6 & the Passion recording!7
All love.
Ursula.
1. The cycle by Gerald Finzi published in 1956.
2. Howard Ferguson.
3. Jean Pougnet had recorded a concerto in G major by Dittersdorf with the London Baroque String Ensemble (Parlophone 1004).
4. Ten Blake Songs for voice and oboe (CW 1957/5). Wilfred Brown and Janet Craxton were the dedicatees of this work.
5. i.e. at the rehearsal of the Ninth Symphony (CW 1957/4).
6. The film of Jules Verne’s novel starring David Niven directed by Michael Anderson.
7. See VWL3305.