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that.

RVW was taught initially at the RCM by F.E. Gladstone (a first cousin of
the Liberal prime minister), who was himself an organist, and a teacher
who made sure RVW worked his way methodically through Macfarren's
'Harmony', a dry technical volume that RVW absorbed like mother's milk
and which, in later years, ensured he became one of the surest-footed
orchestraters ever produced anywhere.

Ever since entering the RCM it had been RVWs desire to study under
Parry (who at that time was considered the greatest of all English
composers), and after two terms with Gladstone, and passing with a Grade
5 in composition, he was able to do so.

As Day reminds us, Parry always "...tried to find out whether the music of
his pupils had any individuality, if it contained something
'characteristic'; not merely content, as so many teachers are, with
pointing out faults, he also prescribed remedies for them which to him
suited the students personality."

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848 - 1918) was born in Bournemouth
and is perhaps best now remembered as the composer of the music for the
hymn 'Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' and the musical setting of
Blake's 'Jerusalem', the orchestration of which was completed by Sir Edward Elgar (a
neighbour of Parrys) when the Dorset born composer fell ill in 1916.

Parry was a man of high principles whose politics, for the times, was
highly radical (he half jokingly suggested that the House of Lords would
be improved by the inclusions of a few criminals), with a highly
developed sense of artistic integrity, who nevertheless disliked French
opera (RVW became a great lover of Bizet nonetheless), but went on to
write some fine music - most notably 'The Ode on the Nativity' (1912),
and 'Songs of Farewell' (1916-18) - which influenced RVW hugely. Parry
the radical and the methodical was therefore the perfect teacher for
Ralph Vaughan Williams.

After leaving the Royal College of Music - and with very few money worries - RVW worked at becoming a composer, writing for both professional and amateur musicians and singers.

RVW married his first wife, Adeline, in 1897, a marriage that lasted until her death, in 1951, at the age of eighty. There were no offspring.

Throughout the last few years of her life RVW nursed his wife
with a devotion one would have expected of this extraordinary man, although he had met his second wife, Ursula, in the 1940s. She was to act as his sectretary until their marriage in 1953.

Ralph Vaughan Williams died at his London home on the 26th August,

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