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… — 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
