SONGS IN THE KEY OF TORY:

Writing with clarity of vision is tricky given how embedded Vaughan Williams is in British musical culture. He wore many hats in his time: symphonic composer, choral society conductor, folksong collector, hymn-tune compiler. Vaughan Williams enjoyed a combination of popularity and prestige unrivalled by many of his British contemporaries, and he remains the nation's favourite composer, even if others might have a stronger claim to be Britain's best.

Familiarity emanates from Vaughan Williams's musical language; its blend of folk modality, references to the English Renaissance and austere chromaticism creates a close conversation between present and past. Vaughan Williams once remarked that he didn't remember whether he had composed a piece or just remembered it. "I've not had a new musical idea since I was 30," he would later tell the conductor Christopher Finzi.

But as Saylor's new biography shows, Vaughan Williams was actively involved in building a tradition for the future - he did more than merely draw on the past. Where Saylor describes Vaughan Williams's work collecting folk songs as preservationist and promotional, Vaughan Williams's "revivalist and reformist" compilation of the New English Hymnal (confining his most hated Victorian hymns to an appendix nicknamed the Chamber of Horrors and replacing them with Tallis, Purcell, Gibbons and a lot of contemporary pieces - including some of his own) demonstrates his inclination to look afresh at traditions otherwise taken for granted. He was, according to previous biographer Michael Kennedy, "that extremely English product - the natural nonconformist with a conservative regard for the best tradition". But regard doesn't necessarily equate to reverence - a key duality Vaughan Williams battled with as he worked to find his own compositional voice and his own English tradition to situate it in.

In many ways the editorial approach taken by Vaughan Williams when compiling the hymnal - looking beyond received notions of taste - was mirrored in his music, which was criticised after the second world war. As Saylor notes, a new generation of composers and critics "took issue with the music and the aesthetic values that he had long promoted, such as his continued advocacy for the relevance of folksong and a robust culture of 'national music' for England".

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