Editing Ralph Vaughan Williams (section)

===Vocal music===
Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote of her husband's love of literature, and listed some of his favourite writers and writings:
{{blockquote|From [[John Skelton (poet)|Skelton]] and [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]], [[Philip Sidney|Sidney]], [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]], the Authorised Version of the Bible, the madrigal poets, the anonymous poets, to Shakespeare—inevitably and devotedly—on to [[George Herbert|Herbert]] and his contemporaries, [[John Milton|Milton]], Bunyan, and [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]], [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]], [[Algernon Swinburne|Swinburne]], [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti|both]] [[Christina Rossetti|Rossettis]], [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]], [[William Barnes|Barnes]], [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]] and [[A. E. Housman|Housman]].<ref>Vaughan Williams (1972–73), p. 88</ref>}}
In addition to his love of poetry, Vaughan Williams's vocal music is inspired by his lifelong belief that the voice "can be made the medium of the best and deepest human emotion."<ref>Manning, p. 28</ref>

====Songs====
Between the mid-1890s and the late 1950s Vaughan Williams set more than eighty poems for voice and piano accompaniment. The earliest to survive is "A Cradle Song", to [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge|Coleridge]]'s words, from about 1894.<ref name=grove/> The songs include many that have entered the repertory, such as "Linden Lea" (1902), "Silent Noon" (1904) and the song cycles ''[[Songs of Travel]]'' (1905 and 1907) and ''On Wenlock Edge''.<ref>Fuller, pp. 106–107</ref> To Vaughan Williams the human voice was "the oldest and greatest of musical instruments".<ref>Vaughan Williams, Ralph. "The Composer in Wartime", ''[[The Listener (magazine)|The Listener]]'', 1940, ''quoted'' in Fuller, p. 106</ref> He described his early songs as "more or less simple and popular in character",<ref>Cobbe, p. 41</ref> and the musicologist Sophie Fuller describes this simplicity and popularity as consistent throughout his career.<ref>Fuller, p. 108</ref> Many composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wrote sentimental works for female voice; by contrast, songs by Vaughan Williams, such as "The Vagabond" from ''Songs of Travel'', to words by [[Robert Louis Stevenson]], are "a particularly masculine breath of fresh air" (Fuller), "virile open-air verses" (Kennedy).<ref>Fuller, p. 114 and Kennedy (1980), p. 80</ref> Some of Vaughan Williams's later songs are less well known; Fuller singles out the cycle ''Three Poems by Walt Whitman'', a largely dark work, as too often overlooked by singers and critics.<ref name=f118>Fuller, p. 118</ref> For some of his songs the composer expands the accompaniment to include two or more string instruments in addition to the piano; they include ''On Wenlock Edge'', and the Chaucer cycle ''Merciless Beauty'' (1921), judged by an anonymous contemporary critic as "surely among the best of modern English songs".<ref name=f118/>

====Choral music====
[[File:Ralph Vaughan William staute in Dorking, top.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Outdoor statue of middle-aged man with raised arms as if conducting an orchestra|Statue of Vaughan Williams by [[William Fawke]], [[Dorking]]]]  Despite his agnosticism Vaughan Williams composed many works for church performance. His two best known hymn tunes, both from c. 1905, are "Down Ampney" to the words "[[Come Down, O Love Divine]]", and "''Sine nomine''" "[[For All the Saints]]".<ref>Kennedy (1980), p. 85</ref> ''Grove'' lists a dozen more, composed between 1905 and 1935. Other church works include a ''Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis'' (1925), the [[Mass in G minor (Vaughan Williams)|Mass in G minor]] (1920–1921), a Te Deum (1928)<ref name=grove/> and the motets ''[[O clap your hands (Vaughan Williams)|O Clap Your Hands]]'' (1920), ''Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge'' (1921) and ''O Taste and See'' (1953, first performed at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II).<ref>Kennedy (1980), pp. 412 and 428</ref>

Vaughan Williams's choral works for concert performance include settings of both secular and religious words. The former include ''Toward the Unknown Region'' to words by Whitman (composed 1904–1906), ''[[Five Tudor Portraits]]'', words by John Skelton (1935), and the Shakespearean ''Serenade to Music'' (in its alternative version for chorus and orchestra, 1938). Choral pieces with religious words include the oratorio ''[[Sancta Civitas]]'' (1923–1925) and the Christmas cantata ''[[Hodie]]'' (1954). In 1953 the composer said that of his choral works ''Sancta Civitas'' was his favourite.<ref>Steinberg, p. 297</ref> The ''[[Dona nobis pacem (Vaughan Williams)|Dona Nobis Pacem]]'', an impassioned anti-war cantata (1936) is a combination of both, with words from Whitman and others juxtaposed with extracts from the Latin mass, anticipating a similar mixture of sacred and secular text in [[Benjamin Britten|Britten]]'s ''[[War Requiem]]'' twenty-five years later.<ref>Kennedy (1980), p. 254</ref>