On this date in 1872, composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England. He was Charles Darwin’s great-nephew. He attended the Royal College of Music from 1890 to 1892 and earned a degree in music from Trinity College at Cambridge University in 1894 and a degree in history in 1895. He later studied music with accomplished composers Max Bruch and Maurice Ravel.
Williams composed orchestras, hymns, chamber music, operas and symphonies. His work included such memorable pieces as “Fantasia on Greensleeves” (1934), “The Lark Ascending” (1914) and “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” (1910). He wrote nine symphonies, including “A Sea Symphony” (1910), “Pastoral Symphony” (1921) and “Symphony No. 4” (1935). He was a professor at the Royal College of Music from 1919 to 1938. Williams married Adeline Fisher in 1897 and after her death married Ursula Wood in 1953.
In her 1988 biography of her husband, Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote, “He was an atheist during his later years at Charterhouse and at Cambridge, though he later drifted into a cheerful agnosticism: he was never a professing Christian.” D. 1958.
PHOTO: Williams circa 1920.
