A health librarian and music - Ralph Vaughan Williams

Writing about Ina Boyle leads me to write about Ralph Vaughan Williams, who she studied with.  Early on I knew about Fantasia on Greensleeves, perhaps his most well known work (although Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is lovelier).  And because I was brought up listening to traditional folk music, thanks to my late Dad, I knew there was a folk song tune lurking in the middle of it*.  And because I was taken to church as a child (thanks to both parents) I knew that he had written some hymn tunes.Vaughan Williams arranged folk songs for " classical " voices and piano, something Dad certainly did not approve of.  Vaughan Williams collected folk songs from people who sang the songs passed down to them, and did this in Norfolk and in Somerset.  He wrote an essay about " national music " , and the importance of folk song.  As well as arrangements of folk song, he used tunes in other compositions (and also as hymn tunes - tunes for Who would true valour see and O little town of Bethlehem are folk tunes).Vaughan Williams was the son of a Gloucestershire vicar, who died when Ralph was a boy.  He moved to Dorking, where he would return to live some years later.  He practised music in the Drill Hall there, coincidentally and entirely irrelevantly a building I worked in when I temped for Surrey County Libraries as a cataloguer some years after (but some years ago).He was musical editor of the English Hymnal, and i...
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