Article: Classical: The slow task of unlearning Why, despite a precocious start, did it take Ralph Vaughan Williams so long to discover his own voice in his compositions? BAYAN NORTHCOTT finds an explanation in the early chamber music, which has only recently been released

Scan a catalogue of all the music Ralph Vaughan Williams is known to have written, from such childhood attempts of the late 1870s as The Galoshes of Happienes (sic) to the incomplete cello concerto he left at his death in 1958, and two impressions stand out. The first is that, aside from a handful of obsessive note-spinners such as Milhaud and Martinu, he wrote as copious an output as any 20th- century composer - something approaching 400 works in all.

The second is that he withheld the majority of his earlier efforts from publication. And not just the rotten-with-promise teenage stuff, such as Benjamin Britten's executors have brought forth in such quantities since his death. In Vaughan ...

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