Ralph Vaughan Williams. “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” within the Framework of the English Musical Revival

The purpose of the research is to shed light on compositional and artistic features of “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, the work of the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The article examines information from the history of the composition’s creation and also attempts to analyse the musical material. One of the tasks of the article is to consider what “Fantasia” has to do with the competition for writing a chamber music piece established by Walter Willson Cobbett. Scientific novelty of the research lies in taking the comprehensive approach to studying the musical material in which artistic aspects of the work are considered in correlation with trends of the era. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” was the first seminal piece in Vaughan Williams’s creative work, in which the composer managed to reflect general trends typical of the English Musical Revival.