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Last in a four-part series about English composers who helped revive early music
Ralph Vaughan Williams, considered by many to be one of England's finest 20th-century composers, had a lifelong love for early music. He was especially fond of the Tudor and Jacobean composers, though his greatest love was Johann Sebastian Bach. He immersed himself in exploring older repertoires, drawing inspiration from them in creating his own works. Unlike some of his colleagues, however, he did not edit early-music collections or publish modern editions.
He was first introduced to Bach's music at school in 1883, and this newfound interest in Baroque repertoire would carry over to Henry Purcell. Indeed, Vaughan Williams maintained that Purcell was the greatest of English composers, though he also became devoted to the music of William Byrd, whose works were being revived in the 1890s, at the same time as Purcell's.
As a student at the Royal College of Music, Vaughan Williams became interested in the modes that were used in medieval and Renaissance music. Indeed, he was so enamored of them that he experienced friction with his teacher, the composer Charles Villiers Stanford. Vaughan Williams later noted, with amusement, that Stanford had criticized his neo-modal efforts as "damnably ugly" and "not music," but he persisted and even attempted to write a modal waltz, much to Stanford's chagrin.
This interest in modal music led to his enduring fascination with English folk songs, and he was a key figure in the folk-music revival of the Edwardian years as a collector and editor. Folk music motifs became an important part of his compositional style, particularly in the first few decades of the 20th century.
Vaughan Williams had no religious beliefs, describing himself as an agnostic and an atheist at various times, but he believed that music, along with Anglican Church traditions, was also a way of reconnecting the people to their English roots. He worked on compiling a new English Hymnal beginning in 1905-it took more than two years to complete- and he made sure to include a number of early works, such as those by Tallis and Gibbons, as well as plainchant settings.
In 1905, Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Cecil Sharp produced a staging of Ben Jonson's masque, Pan's...