Editing Ralph Vaughan Williams (section)

===Royal College of Music and Trinity College, Cambridge===
[[file:Hubert Parry.jpg|thumb|alt=A man in late middle age, bald and moustached|upright|[[Hubert Parry]], Vaughan Williams's first composition teacher at the [[Royal College of Music]]]]
In July 1890 Vaughan Williams left Charterhouse and in September he was enrolled as a student at the [[Royal College of Music]] (RCM), London. After a compulsory course in [[harmony]] with [[Francis Edward Gladstone]], professor of organ, counterpoint and harmony, he studied organ with [[Walter Parratt]] and composition with [[Hubert Parry]]. He idolised Parry,<ref>Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 31</ref> and recalled in his ''Musical Autobiography'' (1950):
{{blockquote|Parry once said to me: "Write choral music as befits an Englishman and a democrat". We pupils of Parry have, if we have been wise, inherited from him the great English choral tradition, which [[Thomas Tallis|Tallis]] passed on to [[William Byrd|Byrd]], Byrd to [[Orlando Gibbons|Gibbons]], Gibbons to [[Henry Purcell|Purcell]], Purcell to [[Jonathan Battishill|Battishill]] and [[Maurice Greene (composer)|Greene]], and they in their turn through the Wesleys, to Parry. He has passed on the torch to us and it is our duty to keep it alight.<ref>Foreman, p. 38</ref>}}

Vaughan Williams's family would have preferred him to have remained at Charterhouse for two more years and then go on to [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]]. They were not convinced that he was talented enough to pursue a musical career, but feeling it would be wrong to prevent him from trying, they had allowed him to go to the RCM.{{refn|One of his aunts thought him a "hopelessly bad" musician, but recognised that "it will simply break his heart if he is told that he is too bad to hope to make anything of it."<ref name=a31>Adams (2013), p. 31</ref>|group= n}} Nevertheless, a university education was expected of him, and in 1892 he temporarily left the RCM and entered [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], where he spent three years, studying music and history.<ref name=chron/>

Among those with whom Vaughan Williams became friendly at Cambridge were the philosophers [[G. E. Moore]] and [[Bertrand Russell]], the historian [[G. M. Trevelyan]] and the musician [[Hugh Allen (conductor)|Hugh Allen]].<ref name=dnb/><ref>Cobbe, p. 8</ref> He felt intellectually overshadowed by some of his companions, but he learned much from them and formed lifelong friendships with several.<ref>Kennedy (1980), pp. 37–38</ref> Among the women with whom he mixed socially at Cambridge was Adeline Fisher, the daughter of [[Herbert William Fisher|Herbert Fisher]], an old friend of the Vaughan Williams family. She and Vaughan Williams grew close, and in June 1897, after he had left Cambridge, they became engaged to be married.<ref>Cobbe, p. 9</ref>{{refn|Vaughan Williams and Adeline had known each other since childhood. When they became engaged he wrote to his cousin [[Sir Ralph Wedgwood, 1st Baronet|Ralph Wedgwood]], "for many years we have been great friends and for about the last three I have known my mind on the matter".<ref>Cobbe, p. 14</ref>|group= n}}

[[file:Stanford-Bassano-1921.jpg|thumb|alt=Man in late middle age, wearing pince-nez and a moustache|upright|left|[[Charles Villiers Stanford]], Vaughan Williams's second composition teacher at the RCM]]
During his time at Cambridge Vaughan Williams continued his weekly lessons with Parry, and studied composition with [[Charles Wood (composer)|Charles Wood]] and organ with [[Alan Gray]]. He graduated as [[Bachelor of Music]] in 1894 and [[Bachelor of Arts]] the following year.<ref name=chron/> After leaving the university he returned to complete his training at the RCM. Parry had by then succeeded [[George Grove|Sir George Grove]] as director of the college, and Vaughan Williams's new professor of composition was [[Charles Villiers Stanford]]. Relations between teacher and student were stormy but affectionate. Stanford, who had been adventurous in his younger days, had grown deeply conservative; he clashed vigorously with his modern-minded pupil. Vaughan Williams had no wish to follow in the traditions of Stanford's idols, [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]] and [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]], and he stood up to his teacher as few students dared to do.<ref>Kennedy (1980), p. 19</ref> Beneath Stanford's severity lay a recognition of Vaughan Williams's talent and a desire to help the young man correct his opaque orchestration and extreme predilection for [[Mode (music)|modal music]].<ref>Dibble, p. 268; and Kennedy (1980), p. 19</ref>

In his second spell at the RCM (1895–1896) Vaughan Williams got to know a fellow student, [[Gustav Holst]], who became a lifelong friend. Stanford emphasised the need for his students to be self-critical, but Vaughan Williams and Holst became, and remained, one another's most valued critics; each would play his latest composition to the other while still working on it. Vaughan Williams later observed, "What one really learns from an Academy or College is not so much from one's official teachers as from one's fellow-students&nbsp;... [we discussed] every subject under the sun from the lowest note of the double bassoon to the philosophy of ''[[Jude the Obscure]]''".<ref>Moore, p. 26</ref> In 1949 he wrote of their relationship, "Holst declared that his music was influenced by that of his friend: the converse is certainly true."<ref>Vaughan Williams, Ralph. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/olddnb/33963 "Holst, Gustav Theodore (1874–1934)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924162936/http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/olddnb/33963 |date=24 September 2015 }}, ''Dictionary of National Biography'' Archive, Oxford University Press, 1949, retrieved 13 October 2015 {{ODNBsub}}</ref>