Song Quotes by Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

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

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

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

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

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

There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences.…

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

No, it's a Bb. It looks wrong and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

— Ralph Vaughan Williams

Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

— Ralph Vaughan Williams