Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OMwas an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth12 October 1872
atheist writing reason-why
There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.
unsaid duty left
The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.
music men path
The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.
dog trying study
I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.
attitude believe ignorance
The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.
art expression soul
The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.
music writing men
It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.
new-york night sight
There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City - the intuition that I had been there already.
country art thinking
I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.