A prolific essayist, Ralph Vaughan Williams produced writings that span his entire musical career from the late nineteenth century to his productive final years in the 1950s. Collectively they reflect not only the composer's wide range of interests and activities, but also his characteristic sagacity, earnestness, and sense of humour. Beyond this, they provide a valuable source of information on important topics relevant to the state of music in England and elsewhere during the lifetime of this important composer. With David Manning's new volume Vaughan Williams on Music we have the benefit of a generous collection of these texts drawn from a variety of sources.

Manning's volume is far from the first publication of Vaughan Williams's prose on music. Written versions of lectures given by the composer in America were produced in his lifetime – National Music Footnote ¹ and The Making of Music.Footnote ² A small group of writings also appeared under the title Some Thoughts on Beethoven's Choral Symphony with Writings on Other Musical Subjects.Footnote ³ All three of these collections, as well as some additional shorter pieces, were published together in a 1963 volume entitled National Music and Other Essays,Footnote ⁴ the second edition of which, with a foreword by Michael Kennedy, appeared in 1987. Despite offering none of the material contained in these volumes (with the exception of the expanded version of ‘Making Your Own Music’, discussed below), Manning's Vaughan Williams on Music contains much other material that has never before been gathered within a single volume.Footnote ⁵ It includes articles, transcripts of speeches, programme notes, prefaces and introductions to books and musical symposiums, and other writings. Several of these have been gathered from source materials that for many will previously have been hard of access. On this point alone Vaughan Williams on Music is of great worth and should join the volumes listed above as a staple research tool for work on this composer.

As editor, Manning proves to be even-handed in this collection, letting the texts speak largely for themselves. He provides at the very outset a modest group of abbreviations for several secondary sources. Immediately afterwards we find a helpful chronological list of contents that groups the writings in the order of their appearance throughout the composer's career rather than in the thematic groupings adopted in the volume itself. The eloquent introduction more than suffices to alert readers to issues relevant to Vaughan Williams's writings, and explains both the selection of content and the criteria for the division of materials into their respective sections. Footnotes throughout the volume describe the sources for each entry, offer clarification where needed, and provide other relevant information. One instance in which Manning's editorial contribution proves to be extremely valuable is the transcription of Vaughan Williams's Howland Medal Lecture, ‘Making Your Own Music’, given at Yale University in 1954. A shorter version of this lecture had long been available as the final part of the above-mentioned The Making of Music. Manning's transcription of the speech, the recording of which is housed both at the Yale University Library and the British Library Sound Archive, augments the earlier text considerably. The extended version, which according to Manning represents the entire spoken lecture, appears in print here for the first time.

Manning divides the contents of Vaughan Williams on Music into six parts, each with its own topical heading. Writings in each part are arranged in chronological order of their appearance and are assigned chapter headings. Part 1, entitled ‘Musical Life and English Music’, contains the widest variety of subjects in the volume, as Manning acknowledges in the introduction. These pieces contain a good portion of the composer's livelier arguments, including some that are quite contentious. For example, the fifth text, entitled ‘A Sermon to Vocalists’ (1902), pillories singers for certain perceived failings, making the jibe that singers ‘think it necessary to put off intelligence as a garment’ (25–6). A later selection, ‘The Composer in Wartime’ (1940), is hardly less opinionated, while being more sober in its reflections on the effect of armed conflict upon functions of music in society. In the latter text, as well as in other essays throughout the volume, Vaughan Williams emphasizes his belief in the importance of community, tradition, and individual expression for would-be composers as well as his conviction that these things need not be at odds with one another.

Part 2 offers nine texts in which Vaughan Williams discusses the music of continental European composers. Here we have a somewhat heterogeneous mixture, in terms of both length and focus. Analyses of particular works or bodies of works – for example, early essays on Wagner's music dramas and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben – are juxtaposed with broader assessments of individual composers. As in much other prose by Vaughan Williams we see a characteristic mixture in these essays of insightful musical analysis and forthright value judgements. Sometimes value judgements take the forefront exclusively, as can be seen in extracts assessing Jean Sibelius and Arnold Schoenberg respectively. In the piece ‘Sibelius at 90: Greatness and Popularity’ Vaughan Williams pays generous tribute to a composer he admired abundantly, whereas his contribution to an obituary article on Schoenberg is perfunctory: ‘Schoenberg meant nothing to me – but as he apparently meant a lot to a lot of other people I daresay it is all my own fault’ (173). This last comment on Schoenberg actually forms its own chapter, which seems a little awkward but is understandable when one considers how else to include it within the volume's format.

Writings on folk-song form the third and longest section of the book, encompassing 29 separate entries and 111 pages. These make it apparent that Vaughan Williams's involvement with folk-song throughout his career was of the most serious and impassioned nature. Though not exhaustive, the prose on folk-song in Vaughan Williams on Music is comprehensive enough to offer a sufficiently representative view of the composer's attitudes on the subject over time. Once again we encounter writings culled from a variety of sources. Several originated as prefaces or introductions to volumes on or compilations of various kinds of folk-song. Certain others were originally articles written by Vaughan Williams for periodicals, including the Journal of the Folk Song Society, later changed to the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, an organization of which the composer was an active member. In addition to commentaries on the origins, transmission, and use of folk-song, Vaughan Williams assesses the contributions of individuals who played important roles in its dissemination, notably Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp. As is the case with other pieces in this volume, Vaughan Williams sometimes makes significant statements about his own tastes and guiding influences. For example, in ‘Let Us Remember … Early Days’ he discusses some formative influences, providing glimpses into his personal development as an artist. At one point he admits that in his youthful fervour over folk-song he ‘went berserk on the flat seventh and the sharp sixth and the Mixolydian cadence’ (252). While statements such as this might seem obvious to some degree for those who know his music, it is of special interest to have Vaughan Williams's own candid recollections.

Whereas Part 2 of Manning's volume had focused on continental European artists, Part 4 shows Vaughan Williams remarking upon his fellow British composers. Although the writings here are brief, seldom exceeding a few pages in length, several offer vivid glimpses into a very human side of the composer. Two extracts on his deceased younger colleague Gerald Finzi make clear the affection and admiration that Vaughan Williams had for his mentee. There are also several pieces devoted to both Hubert Parry and Gustav Holst, the former a favourite teacher and the latter a favourite contemporary (both were dead by the time Vaughan Williams committed his thoughts and recollections to paper). Vaughan Williams warmly emphasizes the artistic values that, in his view, each espoused. Yet, as with his abrupt comment on Schoenberg, Vaughan Williams is here often unable (or unwilling) to conceal his disdain for certain contemporary trends, even while praising those he admires. In ‘Gustav Holst: a Great Composer’, for example, he writes that Holst's Egdon Heath and the ‘Neptune’ movement of The Planets have ‘harmonies compared with which the wildest efforts of our young “moderns” are so much milk and water’ (312). Comments of this nature occur somewhat frequently throughout the body of Vaughan Williams's prose, and it is not difficult to discern a consistent antipathy towards styles associated with, for want of a better term, the avant garde.

The student of Vaughan Williams's music may find the most valuable material in Part 5, which is devoted to the composer's notes on several of his own compositions. Although, as Manning duly acknowledges in footnotes, all of these may be readily accessed in Michael Kennedy's A Catalogue of the Works of Vaughan Williams,Footnote ⁶ it is helpful to have them reprinted here, especially alongside the programme notes on the music of other composers in Part 6. In discussing his own compositions, Vaughan Williams concentrates primarily on matters of musical craft – thematic content, form, instrumentation, and so on. At this he is characteristically adroit and economical, and readers are likely to find these texts to be generally satisfactory musical roadmaps from a technical standpoint. Particularly striking is his idiosyncratic attitude towards extramusical considerations. In the notes on his own works Vaughan Williams does his best to avoid touching upon the matter and disavows explicit references even when writing about compositions that bear programmatic titles. In the note on A London Symphony, for example, he writes: ‘The title of A London Symphony may suggest to some hearers a descriptive piece, but this is not the intention of the composer […]. The music is intended to be self-expressive, and must stand or fall as “absolute” music’ (339). One detects a similar stance in the note on Flos Campi, where Vaughan Williams makes little effort to explain the presence of six verses from the biblical book The Song of Solomon as epigraphs to head the six movements, in spite of his denial that the work has ‘an ecclesiastical basis’ (347).

While the notes on music by other composers in the sixth and final part of Vaughan Williams on Music may collectively strike the reader as similar in nature to some of the analytical writings in Part 2, the justification for their separate grouping lies in their purpose: those in Part 2 were written for periodical publications and not for concert performances. In two notes on Bach's music, devoted to the cantatas and the St Matthew Passion respectively, Vaughan Williams, long an avid admirer of Bach's art and an active conductor of choral music, demonstrates a keen interest in the performance issues surrounding this repertoire. Other notes, such as those on Dvořák's ‘New World’ Symphony and Weber's overture to Der Freischütz, treat their works in a more descriptive way, aided by music examples. Also worthy of mention are notes supplied by Vaughan Williams for compositions by his English contemporaries Gordon Jacob (Passacaglia on a Well-Known Theme) and George Dyson (The Canterbury Pilgrims) for performances at the Leith Hill Musical Festival. Although the remarks on both are brief, Vaughan Williams manages to offer valuable commentary on the musical content and inspiration for both works.

Surveying the literature collected and expertly presented by Manning in Vaughan Williams on Music draws one ineluctably back to the breadth of the composer's involvement in the musical scene of his time and place. One more quotation from an article in this volume comes to mind: ‘The composer must not shut himself up and think about art, he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the life of the whole community’ (42). The writings here demonstrate that Vaughan Williams both thought about art and worked among his fellows in ample measure. As with the past writings of other musicians, some of the views offered in these notes and essays will probably seem dated to many twenty-first century readers. But there can be little doubt that what we read here comes from the pen of an informed, involved, and passionate composer.