“The Best Thing I Have Done” (1909–1914)

The effects of Ravel’s tutelage were soon evident in works like the String Quartet in G Minor, The Wasps, and the song cycle On Wenlock Edge, but the influences of Tudor ecclesiastical music, Elgarian symphonism, and English folk song were equally apparent in the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, A Sea Symphony, and the Five Mystical Songs, respectively, though increasingly harnessed to a distinctive idiom all Vaughan Williams’s own. New opportunities came his way, such as the chance to collaborate on the composition of an opera, a pageant, various pieces of incidental music, and a ballet (although that last did not come to fruition in its original form). He also penned the most strident manifesto of his career (“Who Wants the English Composer?”), a declaration of the value he found in creating music inspired by one’s own nation, and completed his first multi-movement symphonic work, A London Symphony, a testament to his ability to transform words into deeds. Such a range of achievements reflected the fact that people outside Vaughan Williams’s immediate sphere were increasingly aware of his music and his growing reputation, and he also benefited from new relationships with the likes of George Butterworth, Rebecca Clarke, Steuart Wilson, J. A. Fuller Maitland, Harold Child, Isadora Duncan, and Gilbert Murray, but his career came to a sudden halt when war broke out in 1914.