Book excerpt: "This single-volume life-and-works biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams provides a contemporary reassessment of one of the twentieth century's most versatile, influential, and enduringly popular British musicians. Throughout his wide-ranging career-as composer, conductor, editor, scholar, folksong collector, teacher, author, administrator, and philanthropist-Vaughan Williams worked tirelessly to improve the standards and quality of British musical life. His compelling and original musical language-inspired in part by elements drawn from English folksong, French impressionism, Wagnerian post-chromaticism, Tudor-era sacred music, and Anglican hymnody-presented a distinctively British response to musical modernism over his sixty-year-long career, and in works ranging from art songs for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of the twentieth century. Alternating between biographical and analytical chapters, it draws upon previously inaccessible primary sources alongside a wealth of secondary material to craft a concise and engaging overview of Vaughan Williams's life and music"--