Vaughan Williams

"This is one of the first estimates of Vaughan Williams since his lamented death at the age of eighty-six, while still at the height of his musical powers. The deep roots of British musical tradition, stretching back in time through the great work of Purcell, Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons and many others to the masters of the early polyphony, are very evident in the work of Vaughan Williams, who was also a progressive composer in the modern idiom. He was so immersed in the English folksong idiom, for instance, that it is difficult to know where folksong ends and Vaughan Williams begins--yet recalling its strength and universal conception, no one could call this composer's work insular. He now takes his rightful place in the Master Musicians series, where, by arrangement " --Book jacket.