RVW: A biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams
£18.98
A vivid picture of Vaughan Williams in his world - If the proverbial flood washed away all my books on music, this is the one I would dive in to save. Ursula Vaughan Williams was the composer s second wife, and her narrative gains enormously from her personal knowledge of him in his last two decades. This is not to say that the early years are at all lacking in detail -- every phase of VW s long life from his infancy in a Victorian country vicarage to his years as musical elder statesman in 1950s London is fully treated. Where this biography scores over almost every other (only Humphrey Carpenter s work on Britten comes close) is in its evocation of a complete musical world -- all the composer s friends and associates are presented almost as vividly as VW himself. Only his first wife Adeline, perhaps inevitably, remains a somewhat shadowy figure. This book should be read in conjunction with Michael Kennedy s essential work on the music, The works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, which was conceived as a companion volume.