The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams

This wide-ranging examination of the music and life of one of Britain's best-known and most-performed composers is a worthy addition to the scholarly Cambridge Companions series. It bears the hallmarks of others in the series offering not only essays by different contributors, but a full chronology (of life and works) and a useful concise introduction. The index is thorough; the select bibliography reflects the relatively recent scholarship around Vaughan Williams and his works. The editors note that there was little of this until as late as the 1990s.

The book comprises three main parts: the first asking Who Wants the...