Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) and Adrian Boult (1889–1983) had one of the longest and most productive musical friendships between any composer and conductor. Theirs began in 1909 when Boult was still an undergraduate at Oxford, and from 1918 onwards Boult became one of Vaughan Williams’s most important interpreters: performing and recording almost all his major works, programming them in concerts and broadcasts not only at home but also abroad (Vienna, Amsterdam, Prague, Boston, Chicago, New York), working in close collaboration with the composer on many projects including the premieres of three symphonies (the Pastoral, No. 4 in F minor and No. 6 in E minor) and conducting the first complete recorded cycle of the symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The sessions were supervised by the composer, apart from the Ninth Symphony, which was recorded a few hours after his death. Boult continued to be the most devoted advocate of Vaughan Williams’s music to the end of his long career: recording a second cycle of the symphonies in stereo and fulfilling a long-cherished wish when he made the first recording of The Pilgrim’s Progress. In August 1977, his final appearance at the Proms was a performance of Vaughan Williams’s Job, and at his last public concert two months later he conducted the Sinfonia antartica. Touchingly – and very appropriately – the finale of Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony was the last music Boult ever heard, two days before he died in 1983.

The regular collaborations between Vaughan Williams and Boult have been discussed in biographies of both musicians, but this book is the first detailed study of Boult’s relationship with Vaughan Williams and his music. An important impetus for the project came from the opportunity to study Boult’s working copies of Vaughan Williams’s scores. These provide fascinating insights into the conductor’s attention to the composer’s wishes, as well as documenting Boult’s numerous performances. It was Boult’s custom to note down every time he conducted a particular work (date, place and orchestra) and these performance lists provide the raw material for a thorough documentation of his advocacy of Vaughan Williams’s music.