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… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music. — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there. — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Have we not all about us forms of a musical expression which we can take and purify and raise to the level of great… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation. — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound. — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
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… — Ralph Vaughan Williams Copy Share Image
