Vaughan Williams in Context

Challenging residual doubts about Vaughan Williams's role and significance within twentieth-century music and culture, this book places and explores his life and music in their broad musical, cultural, social, and political contexts. Chapters by scholars from a range of disciplines re-evaluate the composer's life and career within a world marked by both rapid change and refigured traditions. Building on scholarship that has established Vaughan Williams as aesthetically and politically progressive, the book furthers a revisionist perspective by broadening understandings of the nature of his responses to the twentieth century. This portrait of a modern composer emerges not merely by focusing on under-represented interests and pursuits, but also by contextualizing those activities that have been misrepresented as conservative or backward-looking.

這本書將挑戰對於 Vaughan Williams 在二十世紀音樂和文化中的角色和重要性的疑慮，並將他的生活和音樂置於廣泛的音樂、文化、社會和政治背景中進行探索。來自不同學科的學者在各章中重新評估了這位作曲家在一個充滿快速變革和重新塑造傳統的世界中的生活和事業。在已經確立 Vaughan Williams 在美學和政治上具有進步性的學術研究的基礎上，這本書通過擴大對他對二十世紀的回應性質的理解，進一步提出了一個修正主義的觀點。這個現代作曲家的肖像不僅僅是通過關注被忽視的興趣和追求來呈現，還通過將那些被誤解為保守或向後看的活動置於其背景中來呈現。