The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was a proponent of nationalism in music and was active in reviving the English folk song.

The son of a clergyman, Ralph Vaughan Williams was born at Down Ampney in Gloucestershire on Oct. 12, 1872. He attended the Royal College of Music and then took music degrees at Trinity College, Cambridge University. He studied in Berlin with Max Bruch (1896-1897). On his return to England, Vaughan Williams served as organist and choirmaster in several churches and was a teacher of composition at the Royal College of Music.

In 1904 Vaughan Williams joined the English Folk Song Society, and for several years he was active in collecting and arranging old English melodies. He also became familiar with the music of William Byrd and Henry Purcell, English composers of the 16th and 17th centuries. The modal melodies of the folk songs and the free rhythms and...