Ralph Vaughan Williams Quotes

• The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Art, Expression, Soul

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  33 Copy quote

• Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Mean, Reality, Sound

  28 Copy quote

• I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Dog, Trying, Study

  27 Copy quote

• But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Music, Disappointment, World

  28 Copy quote

• The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Unsaid, Duty, Left

  Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst (1959). “Heirs and rebels: letters written to each other and occasional writings on music”

  23 Copy quote

• It looks wrong, and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Sound, Looks

  17 Copy quote

• I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Music, Writing, Men

  "Working with Vaughan Williams: the correspondence of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Roy Douglas".

  23 Copy quote

• Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Opera, Used, Wagner

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  19 Copy quote

• There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City - the intuition that I had been there already.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  New York, Night, Sight

  "R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams". Book by Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 30, "Musical Autobiography" (1950), 1964.

  57 Copy quote

• There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Atheist, Writing, Reason Why

  23 Copy quote

• Have we not all about us forms of a musical expression which we can take and purify and raise to the level of great art?.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Art, Expression, Musical

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (2008). “Vaughan Williams on Music”, p.41, Oxford University Press on Demand

  7 Copy quote

• The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Attitude, Believe, Ignorance

  "R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams". Book by Ursula Vaughan Williams, p. 243, letter to Lord Kennet (1941), 1964.

  19 Copy quote

• The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Talking, Tunes, Opera

  Note in the score to "The Poisoned Kiss" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1936.

  13 Copy quote

• To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Mean, Often Is, Dinner

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (2008). “Vaughan Williams on Music”, p.394, Oxford University Press on Demand

  19 Copy quote

• The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Music, Work, Men

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  14 Copy quote

• Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Years, Two, Musical

  4 Copy quote

• A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Musical, Composer, Nations

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  7 Copy quote

• Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Teacher, Cutting, Ideas

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  16 Copy quote

• The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Long, Soul, Generations

  Ralph Vaughan Williams (1987). “National Music: And Other Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA

  10 Copy quote

• I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Country, Art, Thinking

  13 Copy quote

• Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Behinds

  8 Copy quote

• Why should we not enter into our inheritance in the church as well as the concert hall?

  Ralph Vaughan Williams

  Church, Inheritance, Should

  7 Copy quote

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