Lord knows, he was no fashion plate – but he sure could write music!

Ralph Vaughan Williams looked to England’s agrarian roots as a roundabout way of securing the future of its cultural identity.

As did so many composers who were caught in the wildfire of nationalism that swept across Europe from the mid-19th century forward, Vaughan Williams put the torch to the prevailing academicism that stretched its tendrils all the way from Germany to choke the musically “provincial” outlands. He emerged from an environment that had produced far too many knock-offs of Mendelssohn and Brahms. Vaughan Williams would revolutionize his compatriots’ perception of art music by embracing the sounds of the English countryside.

That said, much like Béla Bartók, he was no simplistic, twee purveyor of folk song. On the contrary, he recognized that the rhythms and inflections of his native land were already embedded his DNA. The songs he documented while roaming the fields and fens with his colleague, Gustav Holst, merely brought to the surface what was already innate. What he expressed in his original music was thoroughly internalized and deeply personal.

Some of Vaughan Williams’ best loved works are imbued with nostalgia for a faded world, but the composer pushed forward, as well, through two world wars and into the Great Beyond. He was not a conventionally religious man, but mysticism seems to color a fair amount of his music. Other pieces stare desolation unflinchingly in the face. Lessons with Maurice Ravel made him a thoughtful orchestrator, so that throughout his life he deployed his instrumental forces with considerable creativity and expertise. Given the proper attention, there is much to engage on all levels of his music.

He may not have been on intimate terms with a comb or perhaps even capable of tying his own tie, but beneath that tousled mop and behind those bushy eyebrows, his workshop was always kept in good working order.

Happy birthday, RVW. In all your rumpled glory, we salute you!

Incidental music to “The Wasps”

“Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”

Mass in G minor

Symphony No. 4, conducted by the composer

Phantasy Quintet

Selections from the opera “The Poisoned Kiss,” virtually unknown, but full of good tunes

Adrian Boult conducts a selection from “Job: A Masque for Dancing”

Symphony No. 8, conducted by Charles Munch

“Serenade to Music”

GALLERY: Ralph Vaughan Williams, fashion icon