The Choral-Orchestral Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: Autographs, Context, Discourse combines contextual knowledge, a musical commentary, an inventory of the holograph manuscripts, and a critical assessment of the opus to create substantial and meticulous examinations of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s choral-orchestral works. The contents include an equitable choice of pieces from the various stages in the life of the composer and an analysis of pieces from the various stages of Williams’s life. The earliest are taken from the pre-World War I years, when Vaughan Williams was constructing his identity as an academic and musician—Vexilla Regis (1894), Mass (1899), and A Sea Symphony (1910). The middle group are chosen from the interwar period—Sancta Civitas (1925), Benedicite (1929), Magnificat (1932), Five Tudor Portraits (1935), Dona nobis pacem (1936)—written after Vaughan Williams had found his mature voice. The last cluster—Thanksgiving for Victory (1944), Fantasia (Quasi Variazione) on the ‘Old 104’ Psalm Tune(1949), Sons of Light (1950), Hodie (1954), The Bridal Day/Epithalamion (1938/1957)—typify the works finished or revisited during the final years of the composer’s life, near the end of the Second World War and immediately before or after his second marriage (1953).

This authoritative account of Vaughan William's musical life portrays the story of a great composer's career, and traces the course of music in England during his lifetime. The edition includes a comprehensive list of his work, and an index.

"For this comprehensive account of Vaughan Williams's musical career, the author has had unrestricted access to the composer's private papers. This book includes many letters which illuminate Vaughan Williams's intentions and contains quotations from his writings and from contemporary reactions to his music over nearly sixty years. Besides the straightforward narrative of a full and busy life of music, there is a critical commentary on the works themselves. Special importance is attached to the authoritative catalogue of works which forms the first appendix. All known published and unpublished works are listed here, with full details of instrumentation, revisions, and first performances. Particular attention has been given to accuracy of dates. All the composer's own programme notes are reprinted. For the first time it is possible to have a full picture of Vaughan Williams's creative activities before 1905 as well as of his career after he became firmly established." --Book jacket.

(Meredith Music Resource). This exciting work, by one of today's most highly regarded music scholars, brings new light to the more than two dozen works by Ralph Vaughan Williams for military band, brass band and wind ensemble. Vaughan Williams' unique relationship with fellow composer Gustav Holst is examined as well as his relationships with personnel at the Royal Military School of Music, the BBC and the Salvation Army. There's much more in this hard-to-put-down volume for conductors, performers, students and aficionados! "...the contributions of Jon Mitchell have become a cornerstone of serious scholarship in our field. ...a welcome insight into the life and works of Vaughan Williams. Contained within are valuable insights into the world of Vaughan Williams that, for the majority of us, will be an undiscovered country." Craig Kirchhoff Professor of Music/Director of Bands University of Minnesota (a href="http://youtu.be/8U3fN1SPXVE" target="_blank")Click here for a YouTube video on Ralph Vaughan Williams' Wind Works(/a)

This catalog was originally published in 1964 as part of Michael Kennedy's The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Now published separately, with minor revisions and corrections to the main catalogue of musical works and to the bibliography of Vaughan Williams's prose writings, this work also includes a list of folksongs from the original volume.

Critical annotations and supportive text will direct scholars to the most relevant studies in their discipline Multiple indices make it easy to locate items within the guide

Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of the greatest English composers. He studied under such teachers as Parry, Charles Wood, and Alan Gray, and later in Germany with Max Bruch and in France with Ravel, developing a strongly individual style that marked him out, with Holst and others, as one of theleaders of the twentieth-century revival of English music. He never hesitated to express his views in plain, vigorous prose, and he became well-known for his essays which combine typical common sense with a true composer's sensitivity. This collection contains all his writings that he thought worth preserving in book form. The themes and subjects discussed in these essays reflect his wide range of interests and cover such topics as nationalism in music, the evolution of folk-song, and the origins of music, as well as pieces on individual composers such as Beethoven, Gustav Holst, Bach, Sibelius, Arnold Bax, andElgar. Also included are more general reflections of the making of music, its purpose and effects, and the social foundations of music.