Since his student days Ralph Vaughan Williams had been delving into the roots of English music through a study of folksong and Elizabethan and Jacobean music.. He believed passionately in preserving such material saying in lectures given in 1902-3 that ‘the collector of folk songs gives them back again to the world…will they not, perhaps, once more make their way back to the mouths of the people?’ He was aware that for many people music sung in church was their one experience of practical music making each week ‘and it was all too unworthy both of their faith and of music itself’
“It’s striking how many of the New English Hymnal’s favourites are actually VW’s own creations, mostly as ‘Anon’. Hughes and his Cardiff voices do robust justice to this richly melodic selection.”
-BBC Music Magazine
