How I Discovered...VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 

Growing up in England, VW was part of the musical backdrop to my life. Back then, when media had the quaint notion its function was to educate and inform its listeners rather than pander to their worst instincts, broadcast classical music was unavoidable, so I can’t honestly remember when I first heard him. Fast forward to the early 70s when I moved to Canada and married a Montreal girl, I realized the North American experience was very different. She’d never heard of Vaughan Williams, nor any of the popular classical pieces I thought everyone knew. I got her to sit down and listen to the Previn VW 5 and she was stunned. To this day her favourite work is ‘the Vaughan Williams with the funny head on the cover’ (the plastic sculpture of VW by Nick Aristovulos on the cover of the RCA lp), and she loves just about everything the composer produced, a good deal of classical music besides. Just goes to show, it’s not that classical music isn’t to many people’s taste, the bigger problem is they’ve never heard it.

Was just really starting to get into classical music, back in college on the G.I. Bill in 1975 after 4.5 years in the Army. Was taking a music appreciation class, loving it, and one night stopped in the public library and pawed through the classical LPs. There was a record with a beautiful cover by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Because my late father's name was Ralph, I thought I'd take a chance on it. Took it home and listened to his "Pastoral" Symphony for the first time -- Boult on Angel. Had never heard anything like it, and was completely smitten! Have been a huge RVW fan ever since....

I first discovered VW when I joined a choir at university singing his Benedicite. It's hardly ever heard but it's some of his most rousing music. The best performance for me of the Thomas Tallis Fantasia has always been Barbirolli. My favourite symphony is the 5th. We Brits may be good at promoting our recordings but not so much our composers. VW was not much played in the '50-60's except for the Wasps Overture, his Folk Song music and of course the Lark. I lived in Liverpool at the time and we were lucky to have Sir Charles Groves as principle conductor of our orchestra. He did a lot to promote English music, including VW. He is also credited as being the first conductor in the UK to perform all the Mahler symphonies in one concert season. That was quite an achievement at the time when Mahler was only beginning to be appreciated by conservative British audiences. Living in Liverpool in the '60's was as exciting for classical music lovers as it was for lovers of pop music.

I first encountered Vaughan Williams, as with so much of my youthful musical encounters, with my very fine high school band. We had played the "English Folk Song Suite" which I really liked, and that led me to check out some of his other music. Among them was the very same Argo recording that Neil B mentioned. Beautiful, haunting music, and not quite what I expected from the lively band piece. I also sang several of his hymn settings in college and church choirs, and had him pegged either writing ethereal music for (mostly) strings and voices or lively folk tune settings . Then I encountered his 4th, and found myself reviewing the situation once again!

My first experience of the great man was when I was 8 and putting the chairs out at school for a play. Someone turned on the speaker in the hall and there I remained, spellbound for the next 15 minutes. It was the Tallis Fantasia but I didn't know that. The music remained a mystery until my Father brought home a pressing of the Enigma and Tallis on an old EMI recording in glorious mono. And there, playing out of our record player was the piece from several years before. The Enigma didn't make any impression but the Tallis Fantasia worked it's magic on me then as it does today and 55 years later. God bless Ralph x

My music teacher at school would play records to us. He was taught by Vaughan Williams and described how he could be very bad tempered but then immediately apologise for his behaviour. He described him as a man of generous and passionate spirit. So The music of Vaughan Williams has always been with me and he is always welcome. You are right about his symphonies being so different…..

To me….just me maybe? I think VW is the most underrated composer of the 20th century around the world; even today! What a gem writer. Here in Englands 70’s, he was still played wildly, but usually the same several works…Tallis Fantasy, The Lark etc, as with today. Do spread the Vaughan Williams name in conversation. I was privileged in my teens to be by chance allowed into his birthplace in the middle of nowhere, as was/is a retirement home post Vicarage. Thumbs up Ralph.😂

I think I discovered Vaughan Williams through the school choir. Our music master was nothing if not ambitious and the school orchestra and choir performed the Serenade to Music on more than one occasion. Even then I thought it was amazingly beautiful. I did have a Turkish friend later on who had had almost no exposure to western classical music until he came to study in Scotland, but who turned out to be exceptionally receptive to it, 'getting' pieces straight away that had taken me many listenings to feel I understood and listening to everything he could. He told me excitedly one day about a new composer he had just come across for the first time called Wogan Williams - a very understandable mistake from an English learner, but to this day I secretly pronounce the name that way to myself.

Hello Dave, Like many, I had heard and loved the Tallis Fantasia from the radio. I bought a couple CDs from BMG-Symphonies 1-4 of the Slatkin set, which I loved. But the real breakthrough came with a trip to Atlanta with some friends to TOWER RECORDS! There I loaded up on RVW-Job, Flos Campi, Five Mystical Songs, Dona Nobis, Epithalamion, Toward the Unknown Region, symphonies 6 and 9, the concertos-they had so much RVW there that I had never heard. When I got back to the dorm I played through the CDs and I was mesmerized. I couldn’t believe that there was all of this great music that no one has ever even mentioned in my music classes, and no one performed or played on the radio. How was this even possible? I found out the silly reasons later-the dodecaphonic cloud of the mid 20th century, the prejudice of Germans and Americans trained by Germans that somehow the music wasn’t “progressive” enough and other such tripe. But in the end I really didn’t care what anyone else thought. For quite some time RVW was one of classical music’s best keep secrets which only few knew. Thankfully, this has changed considerably; the older generation’s prejudices no longer have much meaning, and a whole new generation is getting access to a whole bunch of recordings. Performances are increasing also. I hope that the situation in music schools is also changing.

I knew some of the lighter works, but my real road-to-Damascus moment was the local (Philly) classical station playing the "Sea Symphony" as I was driving to work. I sat listening in the parking lot as long as I could without being late, and as soon as I could, bought the Boult recording to hear the rest. As struck as I had been by the power of the first movement, I was spellbound by the transcendence of the last. I think I was around 26 at the time, shortly after getting out of the Army in 1969. All the works I subsequently discovered only increased my fandom.

In 1969 the good old BBC marked to 10th anniversary of RVW’s death by broadcasting many - it may have been all - of the symphonies. As a 16 year old keen clarinet player just starting out in youth orchestras I listened to RVW’s music for the first time and was hooked on that unique musical world that was at once both beautiful and angry - but deeply moving. Over recent years I sense that, in UK, amateur orchestras and groups have been programming RVW works more frequently. As an amateur, when I have played in the orchestral and choral works our audiences have loved it! So let’s hope the commercial musical world can give the concert-paying public more !

I discovered RVW one evening at a Seattle Symphony concert when they performed the Tallis Fantasia. That must have been ‘92 or ‘93. That did it. I was hooked. I have discovered many treasures among his works since then. Favorite: Dives and Lazarus.

VW edited the English Hymnal and composed quite a few hymns himself, so if you went to a school where you regularly sang in assemblies or attended church services you were bound to become aware of him as a composer of singable tunes: “For all the saints…”, etc. I first got to know and love his orchestral music via a recording of the Tallis Fantasia, which was played as an introduction to a play when as a schoolboy I helped backstage at the local theatre. My school also put on a performance of his opera “The Poisoned Kiss” and the old man came to hear it. That was in the late 1950s, not long before his death. I think it may then have been the Fifth Symphony in the Barbirolli recording which captivated me with its lush lyricism. I agree that the Previn recordings have been an outstanding influence, as well as Boult’s.

I don't exactly recall the first piece by RVW that I heard, but my real introduction to him was my purchase of EMI's 30-cd set of "The Collector's Edition". It was so incredibly comprehensive that I felt I needed no other recordings. All of the symphonies (by Vernon Handley), all of his operas, most of his other orchestral works, great swaths of his choral and vocal music. Slowly but surely, he took hold of my soul, and I began to search out what was missing, what was hidden in the nooks and crannies, his (great!) film music, and more and more of his vocal, choral, and chamber music. Wow! Now, at 82, I have 7 symphonic cycles (including both of the Boult cycles), with the Hickox cycle winging it's way to me, even (as they say) as we speak. Not just the wonderful #7, not just the film score suite, but the entire "Scott of the Antarctic" score. I'm in my 3rd year as a RVW Society member with a healthy number of their Albion releases (obscure but often stunning works). I've gone on way too long, but I have to single out personal favorites: the 3rd, the 7th, Donna Nobis Pacem, The Tallis, Hodie, and (yes!) #1, the Sea Symphony, which offered me the symphony, the choral, and RVW's continued interest in Whitman. Long ago, and without fanfare, he replaced Sibelius as my favorite, my go-to/default composer. I can barely wait for the Hickox cycle to find its way to my mailbox. Thank you for your wonderful chats, especially the ones on RVW and the Sibelius #5 and Kullervo.

Sometime around 1950 my uncle, a longtime record collector, gave my family a gift of "On Wenlock Edge," with Peter Pears, in an album of 78s.

I also grew up in New York (Long Island) and listened to the same radio station in the early 60's as you did. And at night while doing my homework I would listen to my small transistor radio, and like you under my pillow at bedtime. I was kind of a nerd back then and classical music was my savior. The one piece I remember hearing so vividly was Samuel Barber's adagio for strings. Thanks for sharing your story, it brought back so many memories.

Thank you so much for this. I have loved RVW all my life. I'm a Brit, and his (folk influenced) music was embedded in the media in the 1960's, when I was a child. My discovery of him was one of recognition, and over the years, I have increased my appreciation of his enormous range. The first time I felt hooked to him was with the Greensleeves arrangement, and then I discovered the Tallis fantasia. I discovered the Sinfonia Antarctica and Sir John in Love at approximately the same time, and just recently discovered the Introduction and Fugue for 2 pianos - totally wonderful to find such a fantastic work even now, completely ignored, but full of the incredible spirit and soul of RVW.

DAVID: Now 72 years-old, in 1959, I attended Bury Fields Conuty Primary School, Odiham, Hampshire, England. Our fearsome Headmistress (to small children like us) was Miss Cox. As we assembled each weekday morning for School Assembly, Miss Cox would be playing music through a loudspeaker system. We heard the singing of Kathleen Ferrier (she still brings tears to my eyes!) and some fabulous symphonic music. Only in my teens was I to learn that the piece I cherished most from the repertoire of Miss Cox, was the 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'. That forward-thinking Headmistress set me up for a lifelong love of the music of RVW; which contrinues to this day. I am a Member of the RVW Society; and we have an excellent CD label of our own, 'Albion Records' with some superb renditions of RVW's work. Thank you for relating your own encounter with the great man here.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I wasn't aware of the name or music of V-Williams. He wasn't one of the 3 B's and just wasn't included on those 'Classical Music's 50 Greatest Hits' collections. It wasn't until I was in college and getting more interested in exploring beyond the usual suspects that I came across the classic Barbirolli/Sinfonia of London LP of English string music and got knocked out not only by the Tallis Fantasia but Elgar's Introduction & Allegro and Serenade for Strings. What a discovery! All that AND Barbirolli (who instantly became--and has remained--a touchstone of richly humane music-making for me). So yes, it was the Tallis Fantasia that was my entree to V-Williams, and in a recording that enshrines a huge moment in my musical life .

Speaking from Spain here. I discovered VW as a 22 year-old college student, when I bought a DG album by Barenboim and the English Chamber Orchestra, which included Fantasia on Greensleeves and The lark ascending, along with some Delius and Walton miniatures. And that was all for the next 22 years, because I had been told repeteadlly that British music was just an assorted lot of pastoral music by second-rate composers, with the exception of Elgar and Britten. In time, I began getting a bit tired of listening to the same core repertoire, and I felt like expanding my musical horizons. So I got Previn's LSO cycle and my mind blew up while listening to A Sea Symphony. Then I discovered Flos Campi and it was mesmerizing. VW music has so many "wow" moments it has become a staple of my listening experience, and has led me to appreciate other British composers like Delius, Bax, Moeran and Holst. I've been so lucky to outgrow such a silly prejudice!

Interesting to listen to. Thank you. All hail RVW ❤❤❤❤ xxxxx

A fellow I knew, who played the oboe and knew much more than I about music, pointed at the Vaughan Williams section of a record store and just said, "this stuff is great!" So I looked at what was there and I thought the name "Symphonia Antartica" was interestingly exotic, so I bought it. Ralph Richardson started things off with the spoken intro "To suffer woes......life, joy, empire and victory". Andre Previn and the LSO, and Ralph, took me to the South Pole. I've since gone to London, to France during the first world war, The Sea Itself, the Fen Country, the Book of Job, and many other wonderful, beautiful, mystical, and sometimes scary places with this colorful and distinctive composer.

The first work I ever came across was his London symphony, and then the Antarctica. It was during a period of my life when I was really determined to find classical works from my home nation that I actually enjoyed. After I'd run my course with Walton who blew me away with his First Symphony but then mostly left me cold, and Elgar (who actually supported the same football team I do, giving an extra incentive to want to like him!) I came next to Vaughan Williams who was perhaps a bit out of fashion back in the 80s. Curiously VW still doesn't get played very often in Britain either, although his music has become more popular on stations like Classic FM. Nice impression of a posh British accent btw.

You! Apart from the Sea Symphony (which I liked), I never really focused on R V-W until I began to watch this channel. Thanks to you, I am hooked!

Same as you, 3rd sym. It was 1992 so not in line with your early 70's reception of RVW across the pond here in England. I was as smacked in all the same ways of you and would choose the adjectives you have to describe the music: colourful, powerful, melancholic, hypnotic. Thanks again, Dave

While taking a high school music course, my teacher introduced us to the fantasia on a theme by Thomas Talis. From then on I was hooked. I was delighted to hear the fantasia used so effectively as part of the sound track in the film "Master and Commander" .Some of my cherished experiences with Vaughan Williams music was singing some of his choral works like the 5 Mystical Songs, O Clap Your Hands etc. Thanks for focusing on his music.

OMG, the Pastoral Symphony was also my intro to Vaughan Williams! I was also 12 and heard it on my town's only classical music radio station. It was the London Records performance by Boult and the London Philharmonic, recorded in 1954. I was enchanted, and had my grandmother buy it for me at the local record shop.

Colin Davis was principal guest conductor in Boston during the 70's. Got to hear an explosive VW 4th Symphony and American premieres of Tippett Symphonies, Child of Our time, etc.

My father, besides having a small collection of classical records, also borrowed records regularly from our wonderful local library. I remember sitting on the living room floor reading the insert from one of the records in the latest batch from the library and following along with the lyrics printed there. I was entranced! I remember noticing that it was from the composer Vaughn Williams. I didn't hear any of his other music after that for a while. Jump ahead many years to a moment when i was reminded of that memory of VW, and I had to do a google search to figure out what I'd heard. I finally figured out that it was Five Mystical Songs. Lovely! But I like many other pieces by him even more.

I was in my teens and not a classical music fan, and my elder brother had a Marriner disc with Greensleeves, Dives and Lazarus, The Lark Ascending and The Tallis Fantasia. The transcendent beauty of the latter was like nothing I had ever heard before. The London Symphony followed soon after and I was hooked.

My first acquaintance of VW's music was via a friend of mine who had a copy of that Argo LP with Neville Marriner and ASMF with the Tallis Fantasia, the Greensleeves Fantasia, The Lark Ascending, and Dives and Lazarus. She played it for me and I was transfixed. I was crashing on her and her partners' couch for a few weeks having just come back to town until I could get my own place. Once I did, I went out and bought a copy, and was quite eager to hear more. The next thing I picked up was a copy of his "London" Symphony - and after that it was like a cascade effect. His symphonies are one of the best symphonic cycles out there. Magnificent music.

We’re near contemporaries, Dave, and as a teenager I knew more about Shakespeare than classical music. Some writer mentioned that Shakespeare’s most beautiful lines, the Lorenzo/Jessica “duet” from Merchant of Venice, were in a piece for 16 solo voices called Serenade to Music. I found the Boult recording that included the equally gorgeous Fifth Symphony and “like an angel sings” (it was the Angel LP) I was a goner. Best to you.

The turbulent yet keening beast known as VW's Sixth was my first exposure to his music, sometime in the early 1980's. It was Adrian Boult conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra, a recording I proceeded to listen to on continual repeat for a few days while I was traveling.

I actually first began hearing him on Classic FM (though in America). Of course they play the hits, like Tallis Fantasia, Greensleeves, etc. but the piece that really got my interest was the Overture to The Wasps. From there I began exploring and now I have a decent collection of enjoyable pieces.

I started small with Vaughan Williams: the Fantasia on Greensleeves and The English Folk Song Suite. My first Symphony was the London and I eventually found the others. I had books of surveys of Classical Music and that's where I first saw his name-assuming it was pronounced the American way-like"Ralph Kramden". I'm sure it was Library records where I first heard his works and then I would search out what I liked at the record stores. I have to say the library and the radio(yes WQXR) were a big boon to my discovery of music.

In the early 70s, while in college, I worked at the local classical music station. Every now and again music of VW was scheduled. I recall the Thomas Tallis Fantasia and the Pastoral Symphony were played the most often. More importantly, my college orchestra played the Thomas Tallis Fantasia, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, and the Serenade to Music. A friend of mine, when he was the conductor of a community orchestra in Ohio, performed symphonies 3, 6, and 8.

I discovered Vaughan Williams by buying a secondhand cd, Sinfonia Antartica, London Philharmonic under direction of Bernhard Haitink. I didn’t know what I bought although I already was a classical music lover for two decades (I am now 45 years old). I just loved, and still love, it. By now I have all his symphonic works (Haitink). Now I will listen to the Previn recording because you seem to be enthusiastic about it. By the way, I am from the Netherlands and I love your videos!

I “found” RVW in college when I was in a choir and we performed Dona Nobis Pacem. This was in the early 70’s in the USA, during the Vietnam War, so it made quite an impression.

The first work by RVW was "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis" My boyfriend at the time loved it and refused to let me leave my dorm until he played the whole work. It was months later that NPR played a performance of "A Song or Thanksgiving" one afternoon. I was driving home from college. I learned it was rarely performed and commissioned to commemorate the ending of the European campaign of ww2. God that piece is moving.

Wonderful story, Dave! We're about 10 years apart. I grew up in Manhattan, and I haunted Sam Goody's two stores on 49th Street. I'm sure you visited those stores. I so enjoyed going through the stacks of LPs and one day happened to come upon the mono set of RVW Symphonies conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Like yourself, the Antarctica Sym. 7 was my first RVW experience. THRILLING! While you first heard Sir Ralph Richardson and Previn, for me it was Sir John Gielgud and Boult. I was mesmerized by the icy, haunting chorus and Heather Harper's angel-like warrior lament foretelling disaster, and laterI heard that magnificent organ coming in with the tam tam. Also the strutting penguins. I love both the early sets, but I'll never forget the thrill of the Boult recordings. I think it was 1953 London mono with RVW's face on the covers. The sound was striking. Incidentally my first Mahler thrill was the first Bernstein Sony performance - magnificent with the cosmic chorus at the end. Thank you for inviting me to share, Dave. Two final thrills: first hearing Lark Ascending with Rafael Druian and :Luis Lane/Cleveland on an Epic LP and the premier of the RVW Sym. 9 (Everest LP) with Boult talking movingly about RVW's passing just before the symphony began to sound.

Great stories !

Memories.. Sir Adrian and the release of the symphonies in the late 1960s, the Previn set in the early 70s, Barbirolli on Vanguard...the Live Pastoral performance with the Cleveland Orchestra in the early 70s...and the film music "49th Parallel" and "Scott of the Antarctic" in the 60s...

I live in Milwaukee, which used to have a classical music radio station. I was a teen and was driving the family car to meet my parents at my grandparents' apartment. I was listening to the classical station as I was driving, and a piece came on that was so beautiful, I had to pull over to listen to all of it. It was "Flos Campi" by Vaughan Williams. I wrote the information down, bought the record as soon as I could, and went on from there to hear everything by him that I could. I am a clarinetist, I majored in music history, I have heard and played and loved a lot of music, but Vaughan Williams's music generally and "Flos Campi" particularly move me as few other composers and works do. I would nominate the last section of "Flos Campi" -- "Set Me for a Seal Upon Your Heart" -- for your "Most Beautiful Melodies" series; if music can sound like love, it sounds like that.

Way back c. 1965, my piano teacher lent me his Boult mono LP of the "Sinfonia Antartica", which I was only moderately interested in. In late '68, on my monthly spree to Chicago, I checked out the score of the VW 8th at Carl Fischer's and, dazzled by the scoring of the finale, bought it, then ran down to Rose Records and bought the older Boult London recording. Loved the great D Major climax near the end of the 1st Mvt (of the 8th; Stokowski's live BBC version ('64) still unbeatable). In summer of '69, I bought the rest of the VW symphonies (scores and recordings, except for #1), so by the time I left for the Cleveland Institute that fall, I had the more-or-less complete sets (LPs AND scores) of the symphonies of Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich, and Vaughan Williams. In fall, 1970, I actually sang the low bass part ("The motions of his spirit") in the Serenade to Music at the Institute on a program that also included Flos Campi. This was very unusual , but the conductor (the late William Appling) was a man of varied taste and interests (the middle work on that program, as I recall, was Handel's Ode to St Ceclia's Day). LR

I’m an American. In August, 1973, I was returning home from London, where I had been for a few weeks. It was on a TWA jet, and the classical music offerings were slim. Then I heard the “English Folksong Suite,” and since the channel on the plane was so short, I heard it four or five times. When I got home, I looked for his works, and first thing I found was the “Pastoral Symphony.” And I was hooked. “The Lark Ascending followed shortly thereafter. And I’m still discovering!!

My first VW record was the Tallis Fantasia; notably saturated with passionate feeling. (Barbirolli 1962, bought about1965.) The work was frequently played on the BBC, which I was glued to. I didn't get to the larger VW works until a bit later, starting with the 4th Symphony (Boult), which was thrilling, the 7th (Previn - yes! the organ and Tam Tam - I played that bit often), and then Job (Boult 3 - more organ and Tam Tam!). I liked that it was your "one work of VW." I do not remember the symphonies getting much play live in the '60's when I was going to concerts in London. After his death in 1958 VW seemed to fall out of favour in a modernist environment. The music has done better on record, although there is a revival in London now. VW was a fine essayist. He also selected and edited The English Hymnal (1904-1906), even though he was not particularly religious. He just loved the tunes.

My introduction to Vaughn-Williams was the Tallis Fantasia shortly after we got cable TV in 1985. It was the backing track on a short film featuring a kernel of corn (filmed in slow motion) heating up and exploding into popcorn of all things. Don't be embarrassed over getting the name wrong - I too thought his first name was Vaughn!

I’m almost sure that it was the sixth symphony that I heard first. I’m not sure but I think it might’ve had number four on the backside. Definitely Adrian Boults recordings. And then I remember getting the last of his Tallis Fantasia recordings. And somewhere along the way, the summer choir at Colorado state university in my hometown of Fort Collins sang toward the unknown region.. Those were what got me hooked on RVW.

I found a copy of the Boult Sixth in my library down the street, the one with The Lark Ascending on the flip side back when no one had ever heard of the Lark Ascending -- I think the Boult recording was about the only one around. I liked the album cover. But the music was like "wow" too. We also had a hardware store in town with a cool little record section, and the owner had great taste in classical, and so I found a few more there. Then with some bus trips over to Hollywood I found all the rest. Some fantastic stores there at the time. L.A. by the way started seeing quite a bit of V/W in the late 70s and early 80s. Previn of course would always program British music, and to the consternation of both Martin Bernheimer and Ernest Fleischmann, his boss. I think it actually helped lead to his demise a few years later.

I bought the entire symphonic corpus of Willams for 10 bucks in a milk crate in the basement of an Antique store in Jackson Mich I played the 5th Symphony In one minute, maybe 4 bars I was hooked. That weekend I played each Symphony through a number of times. To me nothing presents his genius- his soul, his love ( and despair ) of England then his 5 th.p.s Alex Ross say Nothing about Williams in his ‘ …Noise’ .

As a teenager, my introduction to Vaughan Williams was the Young People's Concert TV broadcast in living black and white with Bernstein discussing the 4th Symphony. The poor speaker quality of our television did not diminish the impact of the opening chords or anything in the program that followed. My grandfather and I were members of a Columbia Record Club from which I obtained the Boult VW 6th; since being from the backwaters of civilization ( i.e. west of the Hudson) in northwest lower Michigan, no local record store existed at the time that carried this stuff. This recording, along with the Bernstein Nielsen 3rd, was worn out after many plays on the Magnavox side table furniture stereo system. It was all about the music then, as it is now, though I do have a much better sound system.

Loved Sir Ralph's work on RVW7!

It was the movies that introduced me to orchestral music: Miklos Rozsa, Alfred Newman, Elmer Bernstein, et al. But when I started to read about film music, I discovered that only the "established" composers like Walton, Prokofiev, and Vaughan Williams had the approval of the authorities. So naturally I started to investigate their music as well. Thankfully that old kind of snobbery is less common today.

Being English RVW's music popped up all over the place in my youth. I probably first encountered him via the Fantasia on Greensleeves, though that is a folksong arrangement and it said "arranged Ralph Greaves" on the credits. It was many years later that I heard the full Sir John in Love. I always preferred the middle section of the Fantasia and that is based on another folk tune (Lovely Joan). The first RVW disc that I bought was Previn's coupling of the 6th & 8th Symphonies on RCA. The closing of the first movement the 6th was popular from its use as the theme tune to a TV drama series called "A Family at War" in 1970. I've been buying new RVW discs ever since and "new" stuff is still turning up (the complete score of 49th Parallel unearthed from the British Library by Martin Yates and issued by Dutton Epoch). The first RVW that I heard "live" was Job. A girl who lived opposite me was a violinist in the local youth orchestra and my brother and I were invited to attend. That was the first orchestral concert that I went to.

I am an amateur composer I studied music history at college as a music major in Canada I new V.Williams short works but not the symphonies . I'm always reading music lists on the internet and someone recommended the 8th It is one of the best 20th century I like. When I was young you had to take a chance on new music ,buy the LP and hope for the best , if you didn't like it after the money spent you tried to convince yourself it was great , these problems have disappeared now. Canada doesn't play him much either.

Actually many churchgoers of Episcopalian, Presbyterian and a few other Protestant denominations have heard Vaughan Williams - his hymns settings which are great. The composer was quite proud of them and stated that it was quite difficult to do.

What a cool thing for your dad to do for you…

Last year during RWV anniversary very little was played in London. Inexplicable. Even proms dodged a cycle of the symphonies.

Down here on the other side of the world ("Down Under") I experienced the opposite. Around the time of MY Barmitzvah, I discovered the music of Aaron Copland (the first piece I hear by him was "Billy The Kid" and it was on the radio (3 AR was the station-no FM back then -1961) on a recording by Antal Dorati. Blew me away. But any public performances in Melbourne at that time. Nope. Not in the Melbourne Town Hall tha I could remember. Lots of Haydn, Handel etc. I then tried to paly his "Piano Blues" on the piano. Talk about Spiky music! Staretd a lifetime love of Copeland's music.

I love your "discovery " stories cause they are fun and many similar experiences as I. You must have been the easiest kid in your family to buy gifts for...give him LP'S or money so he can buy an LP 🤣

I think we sang Greensleves when I was 9 years old, and it was "arranged" by VW. Fast forward 15 years and a discussion regarding classical music with an older PhD-student (in Chemistry) . I borrowed the Sea Symphony and Antartica (both Previn) from him and then I was stuck. Poor perfornances of Nos 5 and 6 in Gothenburg a few years later (mid-90s), and then virtually nothing for the next ten years.

My first Vaughn Williams was "Flos Campi" on KFAC out of Los Angeles. That hooked me. Though I'm not a fan of the narration, Ralph Richardson was decent and I learned the piece from that recording. In a spooky bit of Film Trivia, Ralph Richardson was the original Crypt Keeper. "Tales from the Crypt".from 1971 was the first adaptation. It was filmed about the time he recorded the verses for Previn. Peter Cushing, Joan Collins, and the great Ian Hendry were also in the cast.

The choir at Worksop College recorded Toward the Unknown Region, in the sixties, just before I went there so sadly I didn’t sing in it. That was the first VW for me. There was a great proms performance some years back. Lovely piece.

It must have been in 1989 when I first encountered Vaughn Williams in a German magazine called, I believe, "Filmharmonische Blätter". There I read an essay on the film music by RVW. For further listening they recommended the symphonies. So first I bought the "Sea Symphony" and was totally hooked. Then I bought the rest of the symphonies - and again was totally hooked. I became a huge Vaughan Williams fan. Being a German guy I became also a certain kind of alien, because I was interested in the Music of RVW when he had not yet been re-discovered in Germany. Even while studying musicology in Tübingen my fellow students sneered at my interest in English music and especially that of RVW. But I succeeded! My musicological exam dealed with the epilogues in the works by Vaughan Williams. Finally many of my fellow students converted and also became Vaughan Williams fans. Today, many German radio stations have discovered RVW, playing his works. And even if his music still isn't performed frequently in Germany, there is a growing community appreciating his works.

Like you, much of my discovery of classical music came from the radio. In January, 1977, I was studying for a quantum mechanics exam listening to WGBH. Within a few minutes of this piece being in the background it entered my conscious mind. After about ten minutes, chemistry had been shelved, as the music being played was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I wasn’t being transported to heaven; heaven was brought to earth. It was Barbirolli’s 1962 recording of VW 5. It is still awe-inspiring almost fifty years later.

Back in the 1960s I sang in my high school choir and we performed DONA NOBIS PACEM. I found it to be extraordinarily beautiful. A year later I sang in my community college choir and we performed HODIE. Well, that did it. The next thing I remember is discovering RVW’S symphonies on LP records. As for the Pastoral, I heard it played by the San Francisco Symphony in April of 1995 under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. His then-wife was the soloist. A truly remarkable evening!

I was 14 & had just gotten my first CD player. My local library had CDs & I had recently discovered that I enjoyed classical music. I knew nothing about it, so I was borrowing things based on the cover art. One day I saw a cover that had the Houses of Parliament on it & it reminded me of the Thames Television logo from Benny Hill. It was, of course, the Adrian Boult recording of A London Symphony on EMI. Borrowing this disc genuinely changed my life forever. RVW has been without interruption my favorite composer for 35 years. My local symphony orchestra had a British conductor who occasionally was able to program English music, & it was there that I was able to hear A Pastoral Symphony & Symphony 5 live, still for the only times in my life. I later lived in NYC for 20 years & would frequent Lincoln Center & Carnegie Hall. During all those years, I only heard RVW twice: Symphony 6 when Colin Davis brought the LSO (with a thrilling performance of Walton 1), & when Leon Botstein & the American Symphony Orchestra did A Sea Symphony (with a great soprano & a dreadful baritone). It's astonishing still that RVW is so little programmed in this country. But so many of our conductors are continental European. And I imagine that Jaap van Zweden, e.g., would rather literally eat a light bulb than play Vaughan Williams.

I discovered VW's music during the 1970's via a TV Drama. The drama was called 'A Family at War ' the music was used at the beginning and end of each episode. I grew to love the music and eventually discovered it was the 1st Movt from his 6th Symphony. Thanks to Granada TV (UK) my love for the music of RVW became a passion.

Add me to the high school band list, back in the mid-1960's, playing his "English Folk Song Suite."

The bargain label in the UK back in the sixties was MFP (Music for Pleasure) and one of the first discs I spent my pocket money on was Elgar's Enigma Variations, with Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony. The coupling was the Tallis Fantasia. This was a music that sounded completely different from anything I had ever heard before. I listened to it again and again, eventually buying the Barbirolli performance, having in the meantime also explored the symphonies, mainly in performances conducted by Previn and Boult. Because RVW wasn't an atonal composer, he wasn't given enough credit for the sheer originality and individual sound of his music. One time I was in a bookshop where the owner was playing this marvellous music through his speakers. I remember thinking how I wished there was a British composer that could write music that was as good as that - only to realise that I was listening to the Fifth Symphony. I recently dug out my old Steinberg record of the Tallis Fantasia, having not listened to it for decades, and it still sounds marvellous.

I discovered Vaughan Williams through John Williams' soundtrack to War Horse. A lot of people in the comments were saying that it had Vaughan Williams influence. That got me into Vaughan Williams folksy stuff and from there I discovered his symphonies. I love the 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 8th symphonies although they're all good.

The beginning of my Vaughan Williams journey was "Sinfonia Antarctica" conducted by Haitink. Granted I discovered better versions later, but that one worked for me at the time.

No one has a better one than this, I guarantee you. My mother had a stroke when I was twelve debilitating her left side. Dad cared for her until she died just before my graduation from high school. My dad, born in 1904 had been an electrical engineer for Westinghouse, apparently a pretty good one (building those horrible dams that kill salmon in Washington state). On one of those projects he rented a room from a married couple. Subsequently the married couple got divorced, and after myumothers death, they found each other and they had a wonderful romance until he died of a heart attack nine months later. Borg (Borghild - Norwegian) took me under her wing (I had a sister but she was suffering from post-partum depression) and, while I was a freshman at the University of Washington, introduced me to Richard Czajkowski (RC), her last employer before retirement. RC had been a professional musician at the turn of the 20th century in Paris, and he married and went to Egypt on his honeymoon. His bride died of a blood disease in Egypt. He returned to Paris, studied medicine, and eventually became the founder of Puget Sound Blood Center (now Bloodworks Northwest). He had a fenced mansion and two pet otters which he had on cameras that roamed inside and outside as we played chess. He had a classical music collection on vinyl, and one day he played the London Symphony, and that was it.

I'm sure I had heard Vaughan Williams previously, but it was Previn's recordings of the third and fourth symphonies that made me take notice. Having these two symphonies together presents quite a contrast. I get lulled into a relaxed state while listening to the calm but vaguely creepy Pastoral and then get jolted out of my relaxation as the fourth thunders into the room. This got me interested, and I started seeking out more Vaughan Williams recordings. I was soon listening to such things as the Sinfonia Antarctica and the tuba concerto. Now, I have multiple recordings of his symphonies and many other works. I wish his music was played in concert more often, but at least there are plenty of recordings available. Vaughan Williams got me interested in English music in general, and I gradually accumulated recordings of music by many other English composers. This ultimately led me to Bax and the bizarre Baxian subculture within classical music fandom. Naturally, I had to collect a large number of Bax recordings. Now, I hear Bantock calling to me, and I will continue to proceed down this rabbit hole from which I may never emerge.

It was the summer of 1966. I was driving towards eastern Long Island listening to WQXR and was mesmerized by this magnificent work with chorus, soloists and orchestra. And then the reception began to fade so I pulled over, for a good while, actually. I just had to know what I was listening to. Of course, it was the Sea Symphony. Very recently I tried an experiment, which I strongly recommend. I turned up the volume quite a bit and put on the last movement of the 6th Symphony. Wow! RVW is one of the all time great composers in my opinion.

As I live in Germany I am a victim of the continental musical arrogance here, still today an after-effect of the Adorno school (René Leibowitz on Sibelius…, brrr). But I have always been lucky with visiting a record shop - and there were really good ones, small and specialised in classical imports. One day - probably in 1979 - the chain-smoking owner of my favourite little shop put on a record and asked me: „And how do you like THIS one?“ And then it went: „Behold the SEEAA itself“. I was totally blown away. It was Boult and the LPO. From this day on I collected English (and American) Music. Serenade to Music followed, the Epithalamion (Willcocks) and an absolutely fantastic String Music sampler with William Boughton and the then newly formed English String Orchestra (never before or since I have heard this music played with such passion). Then Delius, Elgar, Finzi, Copland, Barber… Oh my god, there is so much wonderful music out there and I have never heard any of it in a concert hall. Never. But my stereo has grown better over the years and I‘m totally fine with the situation. Even more so that I can share my joy in forums like this. Thank you Dave for heightening my love for this wonderful music. Greetings from Berlin, Harry

My intro to RVW was in 1965 with an RCA recording of the Tallis Fantasia featuring a British pickup orchestra conducted by Morton Gould. It was wonderful!! I had never heard anything like it. I loved that recording. I followed on with the mono Boult recording of the Pastoral symphony that I borrowed from the public library. I was so fortunate to have dinner with Morton Gould in San Francisco in 1996, just a couple of weeks before he died, and had the opportunity to express to him how much I appreciated his RVW performance.

I was reading the Gramophone magazine and the Penguin guide and somehow understand that Vaughan Williams was a major composer who I would have to listen to. I bought Previn's recordings of Symphonies 6,7 and 8 and was hooked for ever. Now he is one of my favorite composers. Best wishes to all. Fred from Kristianstad.

I was at a concert of Big Country in The Hague, The Netherlands on september 19,1986. They started with the most beautiful little piece of classical music, before they entered the stage. Also they played Rockpalast in the same year. It was on Dutch television, so i taped the show. And yes, there it was again. Later i bought the dvd, but unfortunate no title of that wonderful piece of music. Almost 24 years later, on holiday in england in a lovely cottage, there were some classical cd's. I just played some, and there it was. The Lark Ascending! After 24 years i did found it. And from 2013 i use this little gem as the beginning tune of my classical program "Everlasting Classic" in The Netherlands

The Sea Symphony, performed by the National Symphony in Wash., D.C., around 1980 or so! I was a subscriber, went to the performance that night not knowing anything about the piece, and was bowled over from the first moment..."Behold the sea itself!" I'd never experienced such a perfect coming together of music, words, and an idea -- Whitman's Transcendentalism-infused vision and Vaughan Willams's music took me from where I was at the start and deposited me someplace else when it was over, and I felt like something important has been transacted here!

For well over 50 years the TALLIS FANTASIA by VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS has become my very favorite piece of music. This is unusual for me since to acknowledge one work above all others be it a particular novel, play, film, symphony, or opera not mention one composer above all others is not possible for me. Perhaps it is because the TALLIS FANTASIA has been with me so long & through so many varied experiences may be a reason for this. A highlight happened back in 2008 when while visiting friends in Wales we ventured over the border to the Gloucester Cathedral where the first performance of the FANTASIA took place. At the time we were visiting various Cathedrals just over the border to England & I was then unaware that this very Cathedral was where the FANTASIA had its premiere. Several recordings & performances have since been featured there since Vaughan-Williams composed the work to suit the special acoustical qualities which this Cathedral possesses. As I mentioned I have no composer that I would give my absolute #1 spot to but Vaughan-Williams is certainly high on my list. My ‘Desert Island’ Vaughan-Williams pieces are: THE SEA SYMPHONY (#1), THE LARK ASCENDING, VARIATIONS ON A THEME FROM DIVES & LAZARUS, FIVE MYSTICAL SONGS, THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY, SINFONIA ANTARCTICA (#8) & SYMPHONY #5.

Great story, Dave. Thanks. The 3rd serves me as an anodyne for the insanity and mediocrity that passes for contemporary culture. The wordless soprano in the final movement hits just the right note (no pun intended) for this marvelous work. It was the spooky, pianissimo epilogue to the 6th that converted me. Apparently Vaughan-Williams scoffed at the critics who saw in this sinister movement a world laid barren by nuclear holocaust. My favorite VW work? The one I happen to listening to at the time.

I first discovered RVW with the release of lark ascending with Nigel Kennedy as the lark with Simon rattle and CBSO coupled with Elgar's violin concerto a very treasured CD one of my first purchased and then I discovered the symphonies soon after the Vernon Handley cycle I'm Birmingham Born so went on to attend many CBSO concerts.i now live in Ireland and was lucky enough to see sinfonia Antarctica performed live in Dublin by national concert orchestra of Ireland the wind machine was very interesting to watch.

I really discovered Waughn Williams.. via your channel

For me: playing clarinet in high school, English Folk Song Suite. Next came listening to The Lark, Ascending, Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and others. But the big hooks were, as a pianist, accompanying Songs of Travel (The Roadside Fire, Let Beauty Awake, and Whither Must I Wander, especially), and then, listening to Hodie-the moment where the chorus enters, singing “Immanuel! Immanuel! God With Us! Some time after that I encountered a recording of Sea Symphony, and, as others have said, the first moment “Behold! The sea itself!” Just grabbed me. I love most of his work, from the big compositions, to simple songs like In The Spring, and Tired. Most recently I’ve become enamored of the song cycle House of Life.

As a young teenager in the early 1970s I remember hearing the Tallis Fantasia and not really being able to make head or tale of it. The music seemed sparse and cold, and I didn't like it very much. This attitude soon changed, and I came to realise what an astoundingly beautiful masterpiece it is. Around the same time I bought my first recording of a RVW work, that of the London Symphony, which I bought at the Bond Street (actually Oxford Street) branch of HMV here in London. The LP was on Decca's old Eclipse label, and it was a reissue of Adrian Boult's 1950's LPO recording. I was amazed at the beauty, strength and imagery of the music, and this time around I didn't have any problem responding positively to the actual sound of the music. I was particularly impressed and astonished by the powerful, anguished, and rather surprising cry which opens the final movement, and immediately thought this must represent London suffering wartime assault, but of course this wasn't the case at all. I think as far as worldwide recognition of RVW is concerned the situation has improved considerably in recent years, to the extent that even some of his symphonies are being performed in Europe and the US, for example. This is very encouraging. I don't know why Karajan stopped his championship of Vaughan Williams after recording the Tallis Fantasia with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the early 1950's (the recording most likely suggested by Walter Legge?), but this is a discussion for another day.

First Vaughn Williams recording I heard was Sinfonia Antarctica with Boult & LPO. My roomate in college had it and he thought it wonderful & very dramatic. I thought it sounded terrible, overwrought and kind of disjointed or something, and it took a long time to appreciate both the work and RFW in general :). Later, I came to appreciate him much more though, especially the Pastoral symphony and the variations on Tallis, and some of the vocal works. A lot of variety in his work. And I lived in the UK early '70's, and his stuff was played fairly often live by orchestras in London in my experience.

In the 1970s, my first recognized RVW work was a concert broadcast on WQXR which included the 6th symphony-I was completely bowled over from the first notes to the final ones. I can't recall what orchestra, and what else was on the program, but I would afterwards buy whatever RVW works (Boult and Previn LPs) I could find at the local mall record store. The Previn recording of the 4th again was deep love at first listen. So many years later, when the first STAR TREK film came out, it was a delight to note that Goldsmith had referenced the scherzo to that work in his theme for the Klingons, as they encountered V'ger, hidden in its massive cloud. RVW has always proved a satisfying composer, his thoughtfulness and deft craftsmanship, as well as his emotional scope, never failing to impress. This Summer, RVW is the focus of the Bard College Summer Festival (at Annandale-on-Hudson) which will include performances of Symphonies 4, 7, and 8, and Job is coupled with the 4th! Earlier this season, their The Orchestra Now did a fine performance of Symphony No. 1.

Discovered in high school around 1963, my age 16. Dropped in at a fellow trombonist’s home (probably to play chamber music) and he played the 4th. Wowser!

My introduction to Vaughan Williams was with the Thomas Tallis Fantasia conducted by Marriner with the Academy of St. M-in-the-Fields on an Argo LP. It changed my life !!!

I too use to listen to WQXR out of New York City back when it was located at 96.3 on the FM dial and 1560 AM. George Edwards, George Jellinek, Duncan Pierney, Lloyd Moss, June LaBelle, Robert Sherman and late night host Nimet. Now they're a public radio station located at 105.9 FM. From time to time I would change the dial to WNCN 104.3 FM and listen to Oscar Buhler and Fleetwood. My first acquaintance with Vaughan-Williams ( Ralph or Raph) was the Greensleeves Fantasia and the Enghlish Folksong Suite. As I got older, I got into the Tallis Fantasia, The Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 and the Incidental Music for THE WASPS. Heard the first movement of The Sinfonia Antarctica with Sir Adrian Boult conducting and got goosebumps when that soprano made her appearance. Talk about creepy.....especially when she comes back the second time. Now that I'm an OLD MAN, my goosebumps get goosebumps .... Thanks Dave......

My experience is much like Dave's, although I am at least 10 years older. I first heard VW's music on the local classical radio station, Cleveland's WCLV, back when it was pretty hard-core. The Cleveland Public Library had a wonderful collection of records for loan, and I heard a lot of music that way as well. The first work I heard was the Mass in g, in the Roger Wagner Chorale recording on Angel (still my favorite). I bought the LP with my newspaper-route money and fortunately got the bonus of Bach's Cantata #4 on the flip side, which was my introduction to the Bach cantatas -- a serendipity that I think would have pleased VW. After that, it was the Tallis Fantasia (the very underrated Sargent recording), a mixture of the symphonies from Boult and Abravanel, plus any fill-in works. I missed most of the Previn discs, since I didn’t want to duplicate (not enough money), although I did buy his Symphony #4 for the Concerto Academico and the symphonies with the Tuba Concerto and the 3 Portaits from The England of Elizabeth. In college I began reading studies of the composer -- Kennedy, Ursula VW, Frogley, Mellers, etc. I've collected everything I could, aiming for breadth rather than depth. I've even joined the Vaughan Williams Society. Obviously, he takes up a great deal of my musical territory. When I was young, I didn’t particularly like German music, excepting Bach and Handel, although I liked individual pieces. I found it too harmonically predictable, which of course meant that I was missing a lot. MY 19th century was Berlioz, Mussorgsky, Rimsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Grieg, and Mahler (before Mahler was cool, and you listened to what recordings you could get). As I got older, the major German composers clicked for me, and I have been playing catch-up for nearly 40 years.

Hey Dave, do check out Dutton Epoch's new CD of the complete Vaughan Williams 49th Parallel score! You'll be in for a surprise!!!

V.W. Was definitely out of fashion in London in the 70’s when I was a student at the Royal College of Music. Though a pianist myself, most of my friends were composers and they all looked down their noses. You had to be avant-garde to be taken seriously. Maxwell Davies and Birtwisle were the flavor of the period and VW was derided leader of the “cowpat” school. How things have changed!

I think it was his connection with folk music - with the superb Silvestri/Bournemouth SO recording of his Tallis Fantasia that has never been equalled for atmosphere IMHO.

In the 70’s I was about your age Dave. Even before I had lessons I was selected to play in a big All City youth orchestra when we played Fantasia at SF Was Memorial Opera House. I could not believe how powerful and moving it felt. I am fortunate to have these opportunities in public school Love your discovery tales. 😊 🙏

I first heard RVW when I borrowed a CD from the library at about age 12. I think I borrowed it for The Planets but it also had the two fantasias on it - Green Greensleeves I recognised and Tallis I didn't. I didn't pursue it much then until my music teacher recorded me a few cassettes with "sniglets" on them, random works by random orchestras and random conductors. And two of those were the Tallis Fantasia and the overture from The Wasps both with Silvestri. Then I was hooked and I started listening to the symphonies after that

I was familiar with a few of VW's hits like The Lark (a fave of my grandmother's) but my first exposure to Sinfonia Antarctica was a live performance by the Toronto Symphony. So blown away, I broke the bank and went again two nights later. Walton's Violin Concerto was on the bill both nights as well.

As an undergraduate, my roommate had the Boult recording of his shorter orchestral works, the Fantasias, Lark Ascending, Norfolk Rhapsody No.1, In the Fen Country, Serenade to Music which was my first exposure. From there it was the Previn No.3, 5, and 2, and like many others here, expanded into so much other English music-such a thoroughly enjoyable journey. I have to agree, David, how disappointing it was never played live in the States.

Thanks, Dave, for this charming story of how you discovered RVW. I am reminded that in all my concert-going experience, I never heard a single work of his played by a symphony orchestra. Occasionally I heard one of his band pieces played at commencement where I taught college for many years; and I've sung some of his choral anthems in various church choirs. Otherwise, my acquaintance with his music has come via recordings. My first encounter came as I was pawing through the record collection at the library of the college where my mother taught. I must have been a teenager at the time. I came across a work entitled "Sea Symphony" and discovered that it was a choral piece with a text by one of my favorite poets--Walt Whitman. The composer's name meant nothing to me. But I was swept away by the music with its modal harmonies and the sense of vastness both text and music conveyed. About a decade went by before I came back to RVW. These were the days of cassette players in cars. I was riding along with a friend and he started playing a cassette. The music was so excruciatingly beautiful I almost burst into tears. It was the Stokowski/EMI recording of the Tallis Fantasia. After that I was hooked and snapped up recordings of the symphonies, Job, shorter orchestral works, choral works and his magnificent opera/oratorio "Pilgrim's Progress." My quest to hear as much of his music as possible led me recently to purchase Warner's Complete Edition, which will keep me going well into advanced old age.