The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams Alain Frogley & Aidan J Thomson, editors When this writer was interviewing Simon Heffer about his sympathetic study of Vaughan Williams, I took gentle exception to his claiming the composer for the political Right (he was adducing RVW’s quintessential Englishness); ironically, when the interview appeared and I mildly suggested that Elgar rather than Vaughan Williams might have been of a Tory nature, I received a deal of critical mail, interpreting my comment as an attack on Elgar. God forbid — I had simply tried to draw a distinction between the left-leaning Vaughan Williams (whose political persuasions and agnosticism were not automatic characteristics of his class) and the older composer, but I wonder what my critics might make of this superbly readable anthology which goes far further in placing the composer in a political context, and left-leaning one at that. In fact, it is that element more than anything else — the rigorous and balanced setting of Vaughan Williams in a sociopolitical context — that distinguishes this collection of essays from any of its predecessors. Which is not to say, of course, that the composer’s genius is not celebrated in perspicacious and penetrating essays from such writers as David Manning (talking about RVW as a public figure) and Eric Saylor discussing his music for stage and film. But for those like myself — who love every aspect of the composer’s work from the exquisite beauty of his string writing to the muscular brass fanfares of the Fourth Symphony and Job — this is perhaps the most valuable book on the composer to appear in many years. And its new perspectives mark it out decisively from the work of such perceptive earlier critics as Michael Kennedy. It goes without saying that any admirer of Vaughan Williams should have it on their shelves.
The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, Alain Frogley & Aidan J Thomson, editors is published by Cambridge University Press
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