Six Studies

 By the time Ralph Vaughan Williams had created his Six Studies in English Folk-Song in 1926, he had been traveling around the country collecting English folk songs for a quarter of a century. Along with Cecil Sharp, he preserved many examples of this great English musical tradition for posterity. These short studies were originally written for and dedicated to the cellist May Mukle, who gave the premiere performance with her sister Anne at the Scala Theatre in London on 4 June 1926 as part of the English Folk Dance Society Festival. These succinct but imaginative works are not literal transcriptions of folk melodies, but are based on well-known tunes, freely treated and ornamented in Vaughan Williams’ masterful style.