Desmond Shawe-Taylor

Society

Vaughan Williams

• 26 June 2008
• 1 comment

Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of England's greatest 20th-century composers: his Lark Ascending was recently voted the nation's favourite piece of music. Much of Vaughan Williams's output was influenced by the English folk music tradition, but his finest works - according to the New Statesman's music critic at the time of his death 50 years ago - were his Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which very much reflected the spirit of his age