Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This catalog was originally published in 1964 as part of Michael Kennedy's The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Now published separately, with minor revisions and corrections to the main catalogue of musical works and to the bibliography of Vaughan Williams's prose writings, this work also includes a list of folksongs from the original volume.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Why should nonspecialized libraries purchase this slightly revised edition a of work that has already appeared three times in print (e.g., see CH, Dec'80) and seems to be a straightforward reference work? Because it offers the musically curious undergraduate or general reader far more than one might expect! A superb chronological catalog of RVW's hundreds of works--giving approximate dates of composition, details of movements/sectional divisions and of instrumentation, approximate durations, first performances, revisions and/or alternate versions and publication history, plus helpful indexes--the volume is still more than this. Kennedy (Royal Northern College of Music and author of works on Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Walton, Mahler, Strauss, Britten, Boult, and Barbirolli) perceptively describes--often in considerable detail--virtually all the substantial works. When possible, he adduces program notes from the premiere performances (usually written by RVW himself); occasionally, a pertinent letter to or from the composer or a telling contemporary review appears. The result is a work unexpectedly both utile et dulci, something of a browser's joy for anyone prepared to be seriously interested in this temporarily out-of-fashion, yet really quite important, composer. It belongs in the general, not the reference, section of libraries with strong music-history collections, standing ready to delight unsuspecting explorers. W. Metcalfe University of Vermont