Ursula Vaughan Williams

Oct 26 2007 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

AS WIDOW to a famous British composer, she was known by her illustrious surname, but Ursula Vaughan Williams, who has died, aged 96, was also a talented librettist and poet.

She was born in Malta and later studied at the Old Vic, performing social work and writing poetry, literature and reviews for the BBC.

She married Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1953, when she was 41 and he was 80, after sending him an idea for a ballet. He rejected her first concept but showed interest in a second effort, The Bridal Day, based on Spenser’s Epithalamium.

He met her for lunch and, expecting a matron in sensible shoes, was pleased to find a lively, articulate woman in her 20s whose literary opinions he respected.

Despite the age gap – and the fact that they were both married, she to Captain Michael Forrester Wood – a close friendship began.

She became a regular visitor to Vaughan Williams’s house at Dorking, Surrey, and was welcomed by his invalid wife Adeline, who was happy for her to accompany her husband to wartime concerts in London.

After Adeline’s death in 1951, she spent half of each week in Dorking. In 1953, they decided to get married. They embarked on a life of travel and music, visiting concerts, galleries and theatres all over Britain, and entertaining at their Hanover Terrace home, in London. It was a convivial background for Ralph to start working again, and he completed two symphonies and several choral works.

Ursula provided extra verses for his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress (1951) and wrote the words of the cantata The Sons of Light (1950). He also used her poem Silence and Music for a Garland for the Queen and four more were set as his Four Last Songs.

After Ralph’s death at 85, Ursula set to work writing an authoritative biography on her husband, and afterwards continued to write, publishing four novels and five volumes of poetry.

As well as tirelessly championing her husband’s work and memory, she served on the governing body of the Royal Academy of Music and on the executive committee of the Musicians Benevolent Fund, and was a patron of countless musical organisations and societies encouraging young instrumentalists.

Ursula Vaughan Williams, librettist and writer; born March 15, 1911, died October 23, 2007