I've just spotted this thread while listening to first RVW folk song arrangements CD and checking online to see what people thought of it.

I have a folk pedigree going back to the late Sixties when I first started listening to singers of the folk revival and the early folk rock bands, and going to clubs and festivals. However I'm also a huge fan of Vaughan Williams' music and a choral singer who has sung most of his big choral works and also some of his smaller scale choral folk song arrangements.

With my choral hat on I'm a big admirer of the singers on this CD, especially Roddy Williams and Mary Bevan both of whom I've sung behind on many occasions, and with my folkie hat on many of the songs on this CD are the songs that first made me fall in love with folk music. I therefore have no problem at all in reconciling the art song nature of the arrangements, which I actually really like, with the 'authenticity' of the songs themselves. To me they are simply another way of presenting the beauty of the songs to a wider audience. And don't forget, towards the end of his life VW collaborated with Bert Lloyd to produce the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, which was source material for many a Sixties floor singer!