Welcome to today's deep dive. We're really glad
you are here with us today because, well, our
mission today is to explore how a self -described
late developer managed to break the centuries
-old rules of his field to forge an entirely
brand new national identity. Yeah, it is quite
the story. It really is. We're looking at the
life and the music of the English composer Ralph
Vaughan Williams. And I have to tell you, the
deeper you look into his letters, his biographies,
and, you know, his actual music, the more you
realize this is a life completely full of surprising
contradictions. Right. Absolutely. I mean, we
are talking about a man who was an agnostic,
but who wrote some of the most famous church
hymns of all time. A late bloomer who didn't
really find his footing until he was, what, almost
40 years old? I think 40, yeah. Right. Yet he
composed right into his mid -80s. A man who,
from the outside, seemed like the ultimate British
traditionalist, but who actually led a radically
unconventional domestic life behind closed doors.
It really is a remarkable story. The reason this
matters to you listening right now is that his
journey is essentially a masterclass in how to
synthesize diverse, unexpected influences. We
are going to see how mixing seemingly opposite
things like avant -garde French modernism with
rural English folk songs can help anyone find
their unique voice, no matter what their age
is. It's just a brilliant reminder that you do
not have to have your entire life and career
figured out in your 20s. OK, let's unpack this
because his upbringing. sets the stage for all
these contradictions. He was born in 1872 in
a place called Down Ampney in Gloucestershire.
But his family tree is where it gets... Really
wild. Oh, it's fascinating. Right. He was the
great nephew of Charles Darwin, and he was also
related to the famous Wedgwood pottery family.
So he grows up in this very well -to -do, progressive
-minded environment. But how did being related
to someone as controversial as Darwin actually
shape his worldview as a kid? Well, it gave him
a remarkably open and inquisitive foundation.
There is a great anecdote from his childhood
that perfectly illustrates this. Oh, I love this
one. Yeah, so young Vaughn Williams, growing
up in a very traditional Victorian era, asked
his mother about the clash between the Bible
and his great uncle's highly controversial book
on the origin of species. A heavy question for
a kid. Exactly. But instead of shutting the conversation
down, his mother simply replied, The Bible says
that God made the world in six days. Great Uncle
Charles thinks it took longer. But we need not
worry about it, for it is equally wonderful either
way. i love that it is such a calm measured way
to handle what was at the time just a massive
culture war what's fascinating here is how that
exact parental attitude shaped his entire life
That specific environment created a man who later
described himself as a cheerful agnostic. The
cheerful agnostic. Yeah, yet because he wasn't
forced to reject religion outright, he never
lost his love for the beauty of the authorized
version of the Bible. He became this natural
nonconformist who still held a deep, profound
respect for the best parts of tradition. Which
is such a tricky balance to strike. It really
is. Yeah. But it allowed him to engage with religious
music later in life, not from a place of strict
dogma, but from a place of emotional and communal
resonance. And he was going to need that kind
of inner resilience, wasn't he? Because looking
at his early musical career, it was definitely
not a rocket ship to start him. Not at all. When
he went to the Royal College of Music and later
Cambridge, it seems like even his own family
doubted he was talented enough to actually make
a career out of composing. They basically let
him go just because they felt it would break
his heart to say no. Ouch. And once he gets there,
he immediately clashes with his main composition
teacher, Charles Villiers, Stanford. What was
Stanford's problem with him? While Stanford was
deeply conservative, he was a huge champion of
composers like Brahms and Wagner, which meant
he believed music should follow strict, established
classical rules. Stanford kept trying to correct
his students' music, particularly Vaughn Williams'
love for what is called modal music. OK, for
those of us who aren't classical musicians, what
exactly is modal music and why did it upset his
teacher so much? Think of it this way. Classical
music usually relies on the standard major and
minor scales, you know, your basic do -re -mi.
Right. Modal music uses older, slightly different
scales. If you listen to medieval church chants
or very old traditional folk songs, they often
sound a bit haunting, slightly unresolved or
earthy. Okay, I can hear that in my head. That
is the modal sound. Stanford thought it was incorrect
and unrefined. He was trying to force his student
into a very specific traditional German mold,
which was the dominant style in Britain at the
time. which takes a lot of guts for a young student.
If he isn't getting the validation or the exact
guidance he needs from his official teachers,
how does he survive that environment? Does he
just figure it out on his own? He looks laterally.
He finds a fellow student named Gustav Holst.
Oh, the planets guy. Exactly, who would go on
to be a legendary composer himself, famous for
writing the planets. They formed a bond that
became absolutely crucial to this story. The
Holst friendship. Looking at the historical records
of their relationship, it's just amazing. Instead
of just relying on the official curriculum, Vaughn
Williams and Holst became each other's most brutal
and most valued lifelong critics. They really
do. They would play their unfinished compositions
for each other. They discussed literally everything
under the sun, from the lowest note of the double
bassoon to the philosophy of Thomas Hardy's novel
Jude the Obscure. I think the takeaway for you,
the listener, is so powerful here. Success does
not have to be solitary, and it doesn't have
to be instantaneous. If you are struggling in
your field and your mentors just don't get what
you're trying to do, finding a trusted peer to
critique your work, someone who is in the trenches
with you, is completely invaluable. You learn
the rules from your teachers, but you learn who
you are from your peers. And for Vaughn Williams,
figuring out who he was took a very long time.
Which brings us to a really interesting crossroads.
By the time he reaches his late 30s, he still
hasn't truly found his own voice. In the classical
music world, isn't your late 30s practically
retirement age for a prodigy? For a prodigy,
yes. Mozart was dead by 35. But Vaughn Williams
was a late developer. He is writing music. He
is working as a church organist, which he apparently
disliked, even though it paid him 50 pounds a
year. Hey, 50 pounds was 50 pounds back then.
True. But he knows he's missing something. He
desperately wants to escape this heavy Teutonic
shadow that dominated British music. He wants
English music to sound English. So what is his
solution? Because he doesn't just sit in a room
and try to invent a new style from scratch. He
actually goes out into the English countryside,
right? He does. In 1903, he starts physically
going out to rural villages to collect vanishing
English folk songs. He would find these elderly
laborers, fishermen, and farmers and note down
the melodies they sang, preserving them before
that oral tradition died out entirely. And around
the same time, from 1904 to 1906, he took on
the massive job of being the music editor for
a brand new church hymnal called the English
Hymnal. Getting his hands dirty with the music
of the people. And he loved that experience.
He later said that two years of close association
with some of the best and some of the worst hymn
tunes in the world was a better musical education
than any amount of sonatas and fugues. Yeah,
a great quote. But even with all these folk songs
and hymns, he still felt he lacked the technical
chops to put it all together. So he makes a pretty
radical move in the winter of 1907. He packs
up and goes to Paris to study with the French
composer Maurice Ravel. Why Ravel? He decides
he needs to completely shake up his technique.
Ravel was a modernist, much less dogmatic than
the teachers back in London. This is a bold move
because Ravel was known as a very demanding taskmaster
who took very few pupils. Ravel was slightly
younger than Vaughn Williams, too, which shows
a lot of humility on Vaughn Williams's part.
So how did these sessions actually go? What did
a French modernist teach an English traditionalist?
Well, they worked together four or five times
a week for three months. And what Ravel really
helped him do was strip away that heavy contrapuntal
style. Contrapuntal. Let's translate that for
a second. Sure. Contrapuntal music is when you
have many different independent melodies playing
at the exact same time. When done in the traditional
German style, it creates this incredibly dense,
overlapping wall of sound. Nice. It is heavy,
it is thick, and it can be quite majestic. But
Vaughn Williams felt it was suffocating his ideas.
Ravel helped him clarify his textures. He taught
him how to let the music breathe, how to use
instruments to create clear, shimmering colors
rather than a dense wall of sound. Did Ravel
just turn him into a French composer then? Not
at all. Ravel's quote about this experience is
legendary. He said Vaughn Williams was my only
pupil who does not write my music. Oh, that's
high praise. Very high praise. Ravel didn't turn
him into a French impressionist. Writing music
that sounds... like a blurry, hazy watercolor
painting, Ravel gave him the technical tools
to express his own ideas. If we look at the music
that comes right after this Paris trip, it is
lighter, sharper, and distinctly his own. He
finally had the ability to weave those earthy
English folk songs and modal scales into massive
orchestral works. And the result of this wild
synthesis? Tudor church music? Rural English
folk songs and French modernist lightness was
his first massive wave of hits in 1910. Huge
hits. He premieres the Fantasia on a theme by
Thomas Tallis at Gloucester Cathedral and a sea
symphony at the Leeds Festival. The critics were
completely floored. One wrote about the Fantasia
that you are never quite sure whether you are
listening to something very, very old or something
entirely new. Yeah. He had finally arrived. He
was pushing 40 and he was officially a star in
the British music scene. But just as he achieves
this long -awaited success, world events completely
derail his trajectory. In August 1914, the First
World War breaks out. And this is something that
really stopped me in my tracks when I was reading
his biography. Vaughn Williams was approaching
his 42nd birthday. He was an established, successful
composer. He did not have to go. No, not at all.
But he volunteers for military service as a private.
He joins the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving
as a stretcher bearer in an ambulance crew. It
is hard to overstate how grueling that was. We
were talking about the backbreaking labor of
doing dangerous nighttime journeys through the
mud, the rain, and the unimaginable carnage of
France and later in Greece. Just horrific conditions.
He was considerably older than almost all of
his comrades. He eventually gets commissioned
as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and the
continual deafening noise of the massive guns
actually damages his hearing, which leads to
severe deafness in his later years. And beyond
the physical damage, the emotional toll must
have been unbearable. Devastating. He lost so
many close friends and comrades in the trenches.
One of the most painful losses was a brilliantly
talented young composer named George Butterworth,
who was a dear friend. Oh, that's heartbreaking.
That level of prolonged trauma fundamentally
altered Vaughn Williams. During the war years,
he stopped writing music entirely. He just couldn't
do it. Here's where it gets really interesting,
because when the war ends, he eventually returns
to civilian life. He feels ready to compose a
major new work again. And in 1922, he premieres
his third symphony, which he titles A Pastoral
Symphony. And the public reaction is completely
baffling. They completely misunderstood it. They
really did. Because of the title, Pastoral, and
because of the generally quiet tone and slow
tempos, English critics and audiences, many of
whom had not fought on the front lines, thought
it was just a nice, rustic idol. Like a picnic
in the country. Exactly. They thought he was
just painting a musical picture of cows grazing
in a meadow. The fellow composer Peter Warlock
famously sneered that the symphony sounded like
a cow looking over a gate. They missed the point
entirely. It wasn't about the peaceful English
countryside at all, was it? Not even slightly.
It was actually a war requiem. It was evoking
the desolate, ruined landscapes of the French
countryside that he had seen completely ravaged
by artillery fire and death. Wow. The second
movement features this haunting spectral last
post played on a bugle remembering the fallen.
And the finale includes a wordless female solo
voice floating over the orchestra, which is meant
to be a lament for the dead. It wasn't until
well after the Second World War that audiences.
broadly began to recognize the profound grief
and the Requiem -like character hidden in that
music. I want you, the listener, to really think
about that for a second. Imagine pouring the
deepest trauma of your life, the grief of losing
your closest friends in the mud of a world war,
into a piece of art or a major project, and then
you present it to the world and people dismiss
it as a cow looking over a gate. It's just crushing.
Think about a time when your own public perception,
how people viewed your work, your mood, your
output, wildly missed the actual lived experience
or the true intent behind what you were doing.
It is a profoundly isolating experience to be
misunderstood on that level. But the amazing
thing about Vaughn Williams is that he didn't
let those misinterpretations stop him. He kept
moving forward and he kept pushing the boundaries
of his field. he certainly pushed them with his
middle symphonies by the 1930s he is seen as
the grand old man of british music especially
after his peers like holst and elgar pass away
audiences expect a certain comforting nostalgic
sound from him But his Fourth Symphony, completed
in 1935, completely astonished listeners because
it was so shockingly violent, angry, and dissonant.
The Fourth Symphony was so discordant, especially
coming during a time of rising international
tension in the 1930s, that critics started throwing
incredibly heavy political labels at it. One
critic called it the Romantic, while another
actually used the word fascist to describe his
brutal energy. Yeah, the press went wild. And
to be clear to you listening, those were just
the chaotic labels of the 1930s press trying
to make sense of the noise. We aren't endorsing
any of those viewpoints. Vaughn Williams himself
absolutely rejected all of it. He firmly denied
that the symphony had any political program whatsoever.
He insisted it was just absolute music. He refused
to let critics dictate what his music meant.
And then he pivots again, completely defying
expectations. During the absolute height of the
Second World War, when everyone expects him to
write something military, He writes the Fifth
Symphony. And it's so different. It is incredibly
serene, luminous. And consoling. It was exactly
what the frightened, exhausted British public
needed during all -out war in the Blitz. One
critic wrote that it contained the most benedictory
and consoling music of our time. And then just
when you think he's settled into being a benign,
tranquil old man, the war ends, the Cold War
begins, and he drops the Sixth Symphony in 1948.
This piece opens with what critics called a primal
scream of aggression and impending chaos. It's
intense. But the craziest part is the ending.
The final movement is 10 to 12 minutes long,
and it is played entirely pianissimo, meaning
super, super quiet. It never rises above a whisper.
Listeners and critics were utterly convinced
it was a depiction of a nuclear -scorched wasteland,
a dead planet after an atomic bomb. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, you see a master
artist simply refusing to be boxed in by anyone's
expectations. People constantly push these programmatic
theories onto his symphonies, saying they were
about fascism or the Blitz or nuclear war. And
Vaughn Williams was totally dismissive of it.
He really was. He responded to the theories about
the Sixth Symphony by saying, it never seems
to occur to people that a man might just want
to write a piece of music. I love that bluntness.
But behind all these sonic extremes and public
debates, there was a radical secret life happening
that I think is just as surprising as his music
because as traditional as he seemed in his tweeds
and flat caps, his personal life in his later
years was deeply unconventional. It was. He had
been devotedly married to his wife Adeline since
1897. But as they grew older, Adeline became
increasingly immobilized by severe arthritis.
It got to the point where they had to move out
of London to a house in Dorking just to manage
her care. He was fiercely devoted to her, and
his dedication to making sure she was comfortable
never faltered. But then in 1938, when he is
66 years old, he meets a 27 -year -old poet named
Ursula Wood. She was married to an army officer,
and she approached the composer with a scenario
for a ballet. Despite the fact that they were
both married, and despite a nearly 40 -year age
gap, they fell in love almost immediately. And
they maintained a secret love affair for more
than a decade. She essentially became his muse,
his helper, and his companion whenever he traveled
into London. And here's where the story shifts
from a conventional secret affair into something
incredibly unique and complex. In 1942, Ursula's
husband died suddenly of heart failure. And it
was Adeline, Vaughn Williams' wife, who is largely
housebound, who invited the newly widowed Ursula
to come and stay with them at their home in Dorking.
The arrangement they came to is honestly the
most surprising detail in his entire biography.
The relations between the two women were apparently
extremely warm. Adeline essentially adopted Ursula
in the most amicable way. It's really quite beautiful.
During the heavy air raids of World War II, when
London and the surrounding areas were being bombed,
things were so dangerous that the three of them
actually slept in the same room in adjacent beds,
holding hands for comfort in the dark while the
sirens blared. It highlights a capacity for profound
emotional generosity from all three of them.
It wasn't a scandal. It was a chosen family built
on deep affection. Ursula later helped Vaughn
Williams care for the ailing Adeline until Adeline
passed away in 1951 at the age of 80. Wow. Two
years later, Vaughn Williams and Ursula were
married. She remained fiercely protective of
his legacy, and she openly admitted later in
life that while she had been jealous of Adeline
early on, Adeline's place in his life and affections
was completely unchallengeable. It is a deeply
human situation that completely defies the stiff
upper lip stereotype of mid -century England.
So what does this all mean? When we look back
at the legacy of Ralph Vaughn Williams, we see
a man who fundamentally changed the landscape
of his culture without ever losing his humility.
He actually refused a knighthood, preferring
to just be known as Dr. Vaughn Williams. Yeah,
he never cared for the fancy titles. He never
stopped exploring either. He composed right up
to the morning he died in 1958 at the age of
85. He left a legacy that completely emancipated
English music from its German constraints, allowing
the composers of succeeding generations to write
freely in their own native language. And he did
it by trusting his own vision, even when it wasn't
popular. This raises an important question, and
it brings us to a final thought I want to leave
with the listener today. It concerns an opera
he wrote called The Pilgrim's Progress. Vaughn
Williams had worked on this piece off and on
for 45 years. It was a massive labor of love.
45 years. That is literally half a lifetime.
Exactly. And when it finally premiered at Covent
Garden in 1951. The public and the critics didn't
really like it. It wasn't a hit at all. They
didn't understand it because it lacked traditional
operatic tropes. There were no conventional heroines
and there were no swooning love duets. It was
a deeply personal spiritual morality play. So
how did he react to that? When he talked to his
wife about the bad reviews, his response was
simply, they don't like it, they won't like it,
they don't want an opera with no heroine and
no love duets, and I don't care, it's what I
meant, and there it is. It's what I meant, and
there it is. So I want to ask you, the listener,
at what point in your own life, in your career,
or in your creative journey, do you stop caring
about public reception? When do you finally look
at the work you spent your life doing, shrug
off the critics, and say, it's what I meant,
and there it is?