“Why do you young Englishmen go on composing? Nobody wants you,” the head of a famous publishing firm was reported to have said. In his essay “Who Wants the English Composer?” Ralph Vaughan Williams blamed English mediocrity on their imitation of foreign masters. “It is all very well to catch at the prophet’s robe, but the mantle of Elijah is apt, like all second hand clothing, to prove the worst of misfits. We must be our own tailors, we must cut out for ourselves, try on for ourselves, and finally wear our own home-made garments, which, even if they are homely and home-spun, will at all events fit our bodies and keep them warm; otherwise, if we pick about among great ideas of foreign composers and try to cover our own nakedness with them, we are in danger of being the musical counterparts of the savage clothed in nothing but a top-hat and a strings of beads.”

Most English composers of his time imitated the German and French composers, but young Ralph Vaughan Williams wanted to express in his music the authentic English sound. To do this, he drew on the rich native resources of English folk song and dance. “[A]rt, like charity, should begin at home,” Vaughan Williams believed. “If it is to be of any value it must grow out of the very life of himself, the community in which he lives, the nation to which he belongs.” Vaughan Williams was convinced that the truly English composer would find himself in the folk-songs of his country. Folk songs, he wrote, were “the germ from which all musical developments ultimately spring.”

Vaughan Williams’s fascination with folk-song began quite early, as a young boy, with the traditional English “Cherry-tree Carol.” He later wrote, “I remember quite clearly my reaction... which was more than simple admiration for a fine tune, though I did not then naturally realize the implications involved in that sense of intimacy... ‘[H]ere’s something which I have known all my life—only I didn’t know it!’”

In 1903 Vaughan Williams, a young man of 30 years, first began seriously collecting folk songs and “boring my friends with them.” In 1904 he joined the new English Folk-song Society (which later merged with the English Folk Dance Society to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society—EFDSS). The society was founded as a preservation effort. The proliferation of printed music in rural areas had greatly jeopardized the great English and Irish oral traditions; precious old folk songs and carols were disappearing with a dying generation. Members of the society travelled the British countryside, transcribing folk songs and tunes as well as keeping records of the country-folk who sang the songs for them. By 1905, writes Hubert Foss in his study of Vaughan Williams, the young musician “was collecting folk-songs, at King’s Lynn, in Norfolk, like a trained anthropologist.”

Fascinated by the beauty and rich history of these folk songs, Ralph Vaughan Williams rearranged them, used them in his work on the English Hymnal, and incorporated their melodies into his own compositions. His work did much to raise awareness and appreciation of English folk music, but not everyone accepted him as a serious composer.

“There has been a lot of cheap wit expended on folk-song composers” Vaughan Williams wrote in his “Musical Autobiography.” “The matter seems to boil down to two accusations.

1. 1)“That it is ‘cheating’ to make use of folk-song material... [F]rom the point of view of musical excellence it seems to me that so long as good music is made it matters very little how it is made or who makes it. If a composer can, by tapping the sources found in folk-song, make beautiful music, he will be disloyal to his art if he does not make full use of such an avenue of beauty.
   
   

2. 2)“The second accusation is made by people who affect to scorn what is ‘folky’ because it does not come within ken of their airless snuggeries, because it does not require any highly paid teachers to inculcate it or the purchase of text-books with a corresponding royalty to the author.”
   

“Why should music be ‘original’?” Vaughan Williams argued. “The object of art is to stretch out to the ultimate realities through the medium of beauty. The duty of the composer is to find the mot juste [“exactly the right word”]. It does not matter if this word has been said a thousand times before, as long as it is the right thing to say at that moment.” Vaughan Williams concluded, “I have never had any conscience about cribbing [informal borrowing without permission].”

Though heavily informed by English tradition, Vaughan Williams’s music remains wonderfully fresh and even surprisingly modern. Of Vaughan Williams’s style John Maitland observed, “One is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new.”

◊ Assignment ◊

Your challenge for this month is to collect folk songs from your cultural or family tradition. You will not be permitted to use the internet or printed material to find these songs; you must collect them by speaking with older family members or other elders who share your cultural tradition.

Transcribe the words as this person remembers them. Write down any information they are able to share about the origin and history of the song and tune. Have them share any personal memories connected to the song. When did they learn it? Who taught it to them? Do they associate it with a certain time, place, or event?

After you have done this, you will be permitted to use the internet or printed material to discover additional information about the origin (date, place, author/ composer) of the tune and words, the various versions that have developed over the years, and other pertinent information. Transcribe the tune yourself, or find sheet music for it, if possible.

You will be expected to introduce the song to your fellow society members. You may recite it or sing it, with or without musical accompaniment. Alternately, you may choose to rearrange the songs, or use one or more of the folk tunes you have discovered to create a new piece of music, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams did. Share the historical information of the songs / tunes used.

If siblings prefer to work together, each group should present at least two folk songs.

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