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Subject: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: GUEST,lightnix Date: 25 Oct 07 - 09:28 AM In case anyone missed it, Ursula Vaughan Williams, President of EFDSS, died on Tuesday 23rd October 2007, aged 96. Telegraph story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/25/db2501.xml Associated Press obituary at: http://www.pr-inside.com/ursula-vaughan-williams-widow-and-biographer-r265927.htm |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Bryn Pugh Date: 25 Oct 07 - 09:57 AM There is also an obituary in today's 'Times'. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: GUEST,Edthefolkie Date: 25 Oct 07 - 10:30 AM Also the Grauniad http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2198334,00.html I wonder if Ursula managed to stop RVW eating bikkies/cookies? I once read that a visitor in earlier days, when RVW's first wife Adeline was alive, was amazed that RVW was just about the tallest and bulkiest person he'd ever encountered, and ate biscuits continuously during their conversation. Also RVW and A had a pet BADGER which wandered around the house. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: GUEST,Ray Date: 25 Oct 07 - 11:52 AM Once heard Ursula describe RVW as a "...very pudding sort of person" |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: GUEST,Edthefolkie Date: 25 Oct 07 - 12:17 PM Just been reminded by an old (organist) friend that Ursula VW wrote the words for Herbert Howells' wonderful Hymn to St Cecilia.... "...Your summer time grows short and fades away, Terror must gather to a martyr's death, But never tremble - the last indrawn breath Remembers music as an echo may..." Not very folk oriented but superb anyway. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: open mike Date: 25 Oct 07 - 12:43 PM Sorry to hear....she led a long (and hopefully musical) life. Please explain for U.S. readers EFDSS and RVW? ok after reading obit I found this.. English Folk Dance and Song Society and Ralph Vaughn Williams. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:18 PM Given that the links may be ephemeral: Ursula Vaughan Williams, widow and biographer of composer, dead at 96 © AP 2007-10-25 13:59:51 - LONDON (AP) - Ursula Vaughan Williams, who wrote librettos for her composer husband and produced his biography, has died at age 96. She died Tuesday in London, Gwen Knighton of the English Folk Dance and Song Society said Thursday. Vaughan Williams, who was president of the society, had been in ill health for some time. She published «RVW,» a well-regarded biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in 1964. She wrote lyrics for «The Sons of Light,» «Four Last Songs» and parts of «Hodie» and «Pilgrim's Progress» which he set to music, and produced five volumes of verse and three novels. Ralph Vaughan Williams also set her poem, «Silence and Music,» to music as their contribution to a set of songs by 10 composers and 10 poets in honor of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Born Joan Ursula Penton Lock into a military family in Malta in 1919, she met Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1938 after offering him a scenario for a ballet. It was rejected, but they agreed to meet for lunch and began a close friendship. Both, at the time, were married. Her husband died in 1942, and the composer's wife Adeline died in 1951. Undeterred by a 40-year age gap, Ursula became Mrs. Vaughan Williams in 1953. He died in 1958. In addition to her work for her husband, Ursula Vaughan Williams' words were set to music by David Barlow, Roger Steptoe, Elizabeth Maconchy, Anthony Scott, Gerald Finzi, Alun Hoddinott, Herbert Howells, Elisabeth Lutyens and Alan Ridout. She served as honorary vice president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced. On the Net: RVW Society, www.rvwsociety.com |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:22 PM Can I say here that I find the UK (only?) habit of not breaking paragraphs by indentation nor blank line very annoying? My above is obviously only a partial fix. -- gripe over -- Here's the Telegraph's: Ursula Vaughan Williams Last Updated: 1:41am BST 25/10/2007 Ursula Vaughan Williams, who died on Tuesday aged 96, was a poet, librettist and author as well as the widow, since 1958, of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose second wife she became in 1953. She was closely involved in the arts, especially music, as a member of numerous committees and as a helper of many causes. But if that suggests she was a "great-man's-widow" of the overbearing variety, no image could be more misleading. She met Vaughan Williams in 1938, after sending him a ballet scenario. He rejected her first idea but showed interest in a second effort, The Bridal Day, based on Spenser's Epithalamium. Despite the gap of nearly 40 years in age — and the fact that they were both married — a close friendship began. [Photos] Ursula Vaughan Williams, who died on Tuesday aged 96 Ursula Vaughan Williams with [left to right] Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Michael Tippett and her husband Ralph at a rehearsal of Tippett's Second Symphony at the BBC studios, Maida Vale, 1958 She had no musical training, and Vaughan Williams was amused to learn that she had been thrown out of singing class at school because she could not sing his Linden Lea in tune. She became a regular visitor to Vaughan Williams's house at Dorking, Surrey, and was welcomed by his invalid wife Adeline, who was happy for her to accompany Vaughan Williams to wartime concerts in London and elsewhere. The Bridal Day was to have been performed at Cecil Sharp House in the autumn of 1939 with Ursula as the Bride. Cancelled because of the war, the work was not performed until Coronation week in June 1953, when it was produced for television. After Adeline Vaughan Williams's death in 1951, Ursula spent half of each week at Dorking. She went with Vaughan Williams to France on holiday in 1952 when he travelled by air for the first time. After hearing their friend Sir John Barbirolli conduct Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden on January 12 1953, they decided to get married; but because of visits to Manchester for the rehearsals and first performance of the Sinfonia Antartica they could not find a free day until February 7. They moved to London, to a house in Hanover Terrace, where they lived for the remaining five years of the composer's life. During their married life they visited America, Greece, Italy, Majorca (to call on Robert Graves) and Austria in addition to travelling throughout Britain, and were regular attenders in London at concerts, recitals, art galleries, theatres, cinemas and the opera. Their home was scarcely ever without guests for they had an army of friends, and Vaughan Williams was happy to be back in London and accessible after 25 years in Surrey. One of the pleasantest "traditions" at Hanover Terrace was the monthly party at which from 15 to 25 friends were invited to sing madrigals with intervals for eating and drinking. The Vaughan Williamses also found time to read aloud together through all the plays of Shakespeare. Yet Ursula's prime objective was to provide an amenable background for her husband's work. During their marriage he completed two symphonies and several choral works, and left unfinished a three-act opera for which Ursula had written the libretto. She provided extra verses for songs in his opera The Pilgrim's Progress (1951) and wrote the words of the cantata The Sons of Light (1950). He set her poem Silence and Music as his contribution to A Garland for the Queen, in which 10 composers and 10 poets paid tribute to the Queen in Coronation year, and four more of her poems were set as his Four Last Songs. After Vaughan Williams's death in 1958 at the age of 85, Ursula wrote his biography, one of the best accounts of a composer's life, which was published in 1964. She gave virtually all his manuscripts and sketchbooks to the British Museum before the British Library became separate, a large and generous benefaction for which scholars will always be grateful to her. In 1993 her name was added to those of all the main donors to the Museum since 1700, inscribed on the wall of the grand staircase. She described that as "pretty near beatification". In 1956 she had been a founder-member of the committee of the trust Vaughan Williams established whereby the revenue from his performing rights would be used to help young musicians and British music in a variety of ways. A rule was that his own music was not to be promoted by the trust. She held the meetings in her home, always providing a delicious lunch. She refused to be chairman and passionately championed Vaughan Williams's injunction that the money should be spent, not saved or invested or used for scholarships. Colleagues had sometimes to restrain a wild or eccentric idea; but where anything involving Vaughan Williams's music was concerned, Ursula had an infallible instinct for what was right and knew what he would have wished. advertisement She was born Joan Ursula Penton Lock in Valletta, Malta, on March 15 1911. Her father, later to become Major-General Sir Robert Ferguson Lock, was then ADC to the GOC Malta whose daughter, Beryl Penton, he had married. Ursula had a younger sister, and a brother who was killed in Burma in 1944. She was educated by governesses until she went for two terms to a day school in England, where she was in the form below the future historian Veronica Wedgwood, a cousin of Vaughan Williams. They became friends when they sat next to each other in the bus to cricket, which neither enjoyed or understood. In 1927-28 she spent two terms in Brussels, and from 1928 to 1932 lived on Salisbury Plain, where her father was commandant of the experimental station at Porton Down. She hated this period of her life; she gave up riding as soon as she could, took part in archaeological digs and did as much acting as possible, for literature and the theatre were her principal interests. From 1932 to 1933 she was a student at Lilian Baylis's Old Vic, where the girls took part in the plays nightly as "ladies, wenches or soldiery" and had to be prompters in at least two plays during the season ("quite terrifying", she said in later years, "but Miss Baylis liked to get every ounce of value"). The plays Ursula prompted were Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. Four actors played Macbeth, one of them being Alastair Sim — "and it was very nearly a comedy on his nights". In May 1933 she married Captain Michael Forrester Wood and for the next seven years led the peripatetic life of an army wife, living in pubs, rooms and furnished houses, with summers at camps where her husband gave anti-aircraft gunnery instruction to Territorials. During this time she wrote poetry, poetry programmes for the BBC and reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. Her first book of poems, No Other Choice, was published in 1941, followed two years later by Fall of Leaf. During 1940 she did social work in London, where she had a flat, while her husband was at Cosham at anti-aircraft headquarters. At this time she met those who became her closest friends: the violist Jean Stewart, the folk-song scholar Maud Karpeles, the composer Howard Ferguson, and Gerald and Joy Finzi whom she met at Vaughan Williams's 70th birthday concert in the National Gallery in 1942 when a Finzi song-cycle had its first performance. It was in 1942 that her husband died suddenly from a heart attack. Some of her finest work is contained in a series of poems, The Dictated Theme, written in the days after Vaughan Williams died and published in a selection called Silence and Music. These are some of the most moving love-poems written by a woman and explain why, in spite of her gaiety, she could tell a friend in the 1990s: "Ralph has been dead for over 35 years and every year has seemed as long as the first." She wrote librettos or texts for 30 other composers, collaborating on operas with David Barlow, Roger Steptoe, Elizabeth Maconchy and Anthony Scott, and writing words for choral works or song-cycles by Malcolm Williamson, Byron Adams, Gerald Finzi, Alun Hoddinott, Herbert Howells, Elisabeth Lutyens, Anthony Milner, Alan Ridout, Phyllis Tate and Patric Standford. In addition she wrote three novels and a history of the Bach Choir. She was a generous, imaginative dinner-party hostess, never inviting more than eight at a time so that she could enjoy the conversation. And she was an indefatigable champion of causes, whether it was wildlife, music or some injustice (real or imagined). Her home in Gloucester Crescent, where she made a garden which had something in bloom all year round, was a haven for many whose marriages had broken down or who were in some other trouble; hospitality, a sympathetic ear and down-to-earth advice were assured. She firmly believed that a party and some champagne could cure most woes and ailments. After suffering a severe stroke in November 1994 she made a remarkable recovery and soon resumed her round of theatre-going and parties, refusing to give up smoking and even going to Australia for performances of The Pilgrim's Progress in 2002, and visiting Malta at Christmas 2003. In that year, too, she published her autobiography, Paradise Remembered, and her Collected Poems. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:23 PM From EFDSS: It is with deep sadness and regret that the English Folk Dance and Song Society announces the death of its President, Mrs Ursula Vaughan Williams, on 23 October 2007, at the age of 96. Widow of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, himself a former President of the Society, Ursula was a member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society for seventy years. Ursula was a dancer before the Second World War and, following her marriage to Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1953, accompanied her husband to many EFDSS events. After Ralph's death in 1958, Ursula assumed her own distinctive role in the Society's affairs. She agreed to the renaming of the Library in his honour, and took a leading role in the promotion of the National Folk Music Fund which Ralph helped set up to endow the Library. She was a member, and for thirteen years the chairman, of the EFDSS committee that was concerned with the welfare of the Library. An obituary to Ursula Vaughan Williams will appear in the next edition of the Society's magazine, English Dance and Song. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:25 PM And the Times (London): From The Times October 25, 2007 Ursula Vaughan Williams Wife and aide of Ralph Vaughan Williams who wrote for and championed many other composers Ursula Vaughan Williams will be remembered chiefly as the second wife of Ralph Vaughan Williams. They were married in 1953, when Ursula was 41 and Ralph 80. Ursula cared for him without cosseting him, encouraging him to renewed activity both as a composer and as a leading figure in the musical life of Britain. After his death in 1958 she devoted herself not just to preserving his memory but also to working tirelessly in musical causes that he had espoused, and above all to the encouragement and assistance of young musicians. Her dedication to that mission perhaps prevented her from achieving the degree of recognition she deserved as a writer and poet. Joan Ursula Penton Lock was born in Valletta, where her mother's father was serving as GOC Malta, and her father (later Major-General Sir Robert Lock) was his ADC. She was brought up in army life. As a girl she heard very little music, and did not particularly enjoy what she heard. Her bent was towards literature and drama. In the early 1930s she became a student at the Old Vic. It was while she was there that she heard, and was overcome by, Vaughan Williams's music for the ballet Job, choreographed by Ninette de Valois. But she had not yet finished with army life: in May 1933, after leaving the Old Vic, she married Michael Forrester Wood, a regular officer in the Army, and from then on lived the nomadic life characteristic of army officers and their families. By 1937 Ursula had written a scenario for a masque, which she plucked up the courage to send to Vaughan Williams, in the hope that he might compose music for it. Though at first he showed little enthusiasm for the project, he eventually agreed to meet her for lunch. Vaughan Williams, then aged 65, was expecting a matron in sensible shoes, and was agreeably surprised to meet an attractive, lively, energetic and impulsive young woman in her twenties. He enjoyed her company and respected her literary talent and judgment. The meeting led eventually to their collaboration on words and music for what became the choral work Epithalamion, and for Ursula led to a deepening relationship as a loved and trusted friend not only of Ralph but also of his first wife Adeline. Michael Wood died suddenly, of a heart attack, in 1942. He and Ursula had had no children, and Ralph and Adeline at once insisted upon Ursula coming to stay with them at their home in Dorking, Surrey. Ursula gave up the unpaid work which she had taken on for the St Marylebone Citizens' Advice Bureau, and took paid employment as a secretary-receptionist to a well-known paediatrician in London. From then on Ursula became a regular and increasingly frequent visitor to the Vaughan Williams home, often staying there and commuting to her work in London; and, as Adeline, increasingly crippled by arthritis, became less able to go out, Ursula was more and more often Ralph's companion at musical functions. She also became Ralph's unofficial literary adviser and collaborator, writing the words for his cantata The Sons of Light. Adeline died in May 1951, and Ralph asked Ursula to manage his domestic affairs for him. When, some two years later, in February 1953, Ralph and Ursula were married, it seemed the most right and natural fulfilment of their long and affectionate friendship. Ralph's activities had been increasingly restricted by his living at Dorking, the difficulties of travel, and the need never to be too far away from the ailing Adeline. After their marriage Ralph and Ursula moved to a house in Hanover Terrace in Regent's Park. This enabled Ralph to resume a larger role in the musical life of London, of which he became a kind of uncrowned king, a constant and welcome presence at all kinds of musical occasion. He also produced a steady stream of new compositions: from this Indian summer of his life date such works as the Christmas cantata Hodie (for two numbers in which Ursula provided the words), a concerto for bass tuba and orchestra, a sonata for violin and pianoforte, the Ten Blake Songs for tenor and oboe, and the Four Last Songs (again with texts by Ursula). After Ralph's death in 1958, Ursula moved to Gloucester Crescent, north of Regent's Park — a smaller house than Hanover Terrace, but still large enough for her to be able to have people to stay and to entertain, with a garden which she and her much loved cats could enjoy. Her main preoccupation in the following years was with the writing of Ralph's biography, published in 1964. She did not attempt to describe or assess his music: that was left to a companion volume by Michael Kennedy. Nor did she attempt a direct assessment of his qualities and defects as a man; but by means of a thoroughly researched and well-written account of the events and activities of his life, supported by quotations from his correspondence with family and friends, she succeeded in conveying a rounded, vivid and objective portrait of that great and generous man. She continued to write, publishing four novels and five volumes of poetry and providing texts for many other composers, including Herbert Howells, Malcolm Williamson, Elizabeth Lutyens and Elizabeth Maconchy (she wrote the libretto for her opera The Sofa). But her considerable accomplishment as a writer was overshadowed by the musical side of her busy life. She was tireless in encouraging and supporting performances of Vaughan Williams's music; and it gave her especial pleasure when his opera The Pilgrim's Progress, which had been indifferently received when it was first performed at Covent Garden in 1951, was given a highly successful series of performances at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1992. During these years Ursula served on the governing body of the Royal Academy of Music and on the executive committee of the Musicians' Benevolent Fund. She became a patron of countless musical organisations and societies. Two years before his death Vaughan Williams had set up a trust, which he endowed with the royalties from his performing rights, with widely drawn objects for the advancement of music (so long as it was not his own) and the support of musicians. In the management of this trust Ursula played a leading part, and through it, as well as in many other more personal ways, she found outlets for her open-hearted generosity, particularly towards young musicians and those musicians who had been less blessed than Vaughan Williams with opportunities to get their music heard and appreciated. A slight stroke towards the end of 1994, and a broken arm as a result of a fall the following year, inevitably led to some curtailment of her activities. But they did not dim her zest for life, her gaiety of spirit, her warmth in friendship, or her insatiable appetite for travel to distant places. An autobiography, Paradise Remembered, which was praised for its charm and humour, was published in 2002. Ursula Vaughan Williams, writer and champion of young musicians, was born on March 15, 1911. She died on October 23, 2007, aged 96 |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:34 PM Hmm... no mention of her EFDSS connection in any of those obits! One mention of Maud Karpeles as a friend. ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:36 PM Actually, the AP obit does mention it, but not the longer ones. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams (23 Oct 07) From: Desert Dancer Date: 25 Oct 07 - 01:47 PM It's funny - as of this moment the Wikipedia entry for RVW has Ursula's dates as 1911-2007, but her own entry does not have the update. Her own entry is very short. (With no mention of EFDSS either...) ~ Becky in Tucson |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams (23 Oct 07) From: GUEST Date: 25 Oct 07 - 04:31 PM Une personne d'une très grande gentilesse nous à quitté. J'ai eu quelques contacts par lettre avec elle... elle m'a fait part de belles lignes. |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams (23 Oct 07) From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive) Date: 26 Oct 07 - 05:18 PM Desert Dancer - thanks for posting the obituries. Nigel |
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Subject: RE: Obit: RIP Ursula Vaughan Williams (23 Oct 07) From: GUEST,Jim Carroll Date: 27 Oct 07 - 08:39 AM She was a great champion of the library - hope somebody will take her place Jim Carroll |
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