What is Ralph Vaughan Williams?
{{Infobox Person | name = Ralph Vaughan Williams | residence = | other_names = | image = RVWstatuehead.jpg | imagesize = 200px | caption = Ralph Vaughan Williams | birth_name = | birth_date = 12 October 1872 | birth_place = [[Down Ampney]], [[Gloucestershire]], [[England]] | death_date = 26 August 1958 (aged 85) | death_place = [[London]], England | death_cause = | known = | occupation = [[Composer]], [[folk song]] [[collector]] | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = | relations = | website = | footnotes = | employer = | height = }} [[File:Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking.JPG|thumb|right|Statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking, England]] '''Ralph Vaughan Williams''' (b. Down Ampney, [[Gloucestershire]], 12 October 1872; d. [[London]], 26 August 1958) was the most important [[English people|English]] [[composer]] of his [[generation]]. Vaughan Williams always pronounced his first name “Rafe” - (“Vaughan” rhymes with “born”). His father was a [[rector]]. Ralph was very young when his father died. The family moved to [[Dorking]] near London. He went to [[Charterhouse School]] and played the [[viola]] in the school [[orchestra]]. He studied at the [[University of Cambridge]] and at the [[Royal College of Music]] where [[Hubert Parry]] was his teacher. == Early career == Vaughan Williams wanted to be a good [[composer]], so he went abroad to study with famous composers like [[Max Bruch]] in [[Berlin]] and [[Maurice Ravel]] in [[Paris]]. Yet he knew that he must not simply imitate these composers, so he also studied English [[folk song]]. He became good friends with the composer [[Gustav Holst]]. The two men always showed one another the music they were writing so that they could help one another by offering [[criticism]]. In 1910 he wrote a work which became one of his best-known pieces of music: the ''Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis''. The piece is for a [[string orchestra]] divided into two sections. It uses a theme by the fam