Ralph Vaughan Williams

John Leavitt is a composer, conductor, teacher, and church musician of international standing. He holds the Doctorate of Musical Arts (conducting) from the University of Missouri (Kansas City Conservatory of Music) and is a lifetime member of the American Choral Directors Association. He served as music professor and director of choral activities at universities such as MidAmerican Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, Newman University and Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and Concordia University in Edmonton, Alberta. He has been a director for non-profit community choirs, and is a regular guest conductor at Carnegie Hall; he has also appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. As a composer and arranger, he has published across diverse media and genres for over 30 years. The majority of his output is choral, and many of his compositions and arrangements have become standard repertoire. As a performer, he has recorded 20 or so albums of choral, orchestral, and piano music. Ralph Vaughan Williams, born in Gloucestershire on 12 October 1872, read History at Cambridge and went to the Royal College of Music where his teachers were Parry, Wood, and Stanford. Vaughan Williams believed in the value of music education and wrote practical competition pieces, serviceable church music, and with the 49th Parallel (1940-41) he found a new outlet in writing for film. His profoundly disturbing Symphony No.6 (1948) received international acclaim with more than a hundred performances in a little over two years. His great sensitivity to the 20th-century human condition, his flexibility in writing for all levels of music making, and his unquestionably great imagination combine to make him one of the key figures in 20th century music. Ralph Vaughan Williams had a long association with Oxford University Press; over 200 publications are available in the Oxford catalogue.