Ralph Vaughan Williams' 150th anniversary has highlighted to me what little of his music I really know. Many British musicians like me have played and listened to the symphonies and few youth string orchestras have avoided the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. The Lark Ascending and On Wenlock Edge, also, are due a mention, but the works of Vaughan Williams that stay with me, return to me and ignite reflection and nostalgia are his hymn tunes.

There's something within them that speaks from the vernacular - a sense of what those months of collecting folksong throughout rural England poured themselves into. Famously turning away from religion whilst at Charterhouse School, it appears that faith remained an important part of Vaughan Williams' life. Defining himself first as an atheist and then settling on 'cheerful agnostic', his confusions around religion didn't impact his dedication to church music.

Vaughan Williams was music editor of the most influential British hymnal at the beginning of the twentieth century, The English Hymnal (1906) and subsequently the famous Oxford Book of Carols (1928). Describing the singing voice as 'the medium of the best and deepest human emotion', expressing faith through song became the means by which Vaughan Williams' spirituality was channeled. 

The hymns of his that I hold close, both those he composed and arranged, I do so sometimes because of the comfort they brought, and sometimes because of the humour of memories in church as a child. 'Jesus Christ is Risen Today' at Easter and 'For All The Saints' on All Saints Day have become an inevitability on these festivals. We don’t need to turn to analysis to understand why they are held in the esteem they are, but even so it must have something to do with Vaughan Williams's introduction of the natural minor mode to hymn singing, as well as modal harmony in general and some unusual phrase structures.

Much of it feels it 'shouldn't' work. I remember trying to sight-sing the alto part of the carol 'The Truth Sent From Above' and having a hard time believing that the disjunct line written fitted within the correct harmony. I didn't understand how its fluctuating 5/4, 6/4 metre could flow like it did, but still it finds itself year after year within the Carols From Kings broadcast on Christmas Eve. Challenged and inspired by influence from Ravel in France, as well as immersed within the folk song collection of Cecil Sharp and George Butterworth, these hymns radically altered the dusty Victorian hymn tradition and became part of risking change and innovation in the English Musical Renaissance.

Along with other settings that have moved me like 'Father Hear the Prayer We Offer' and 'I heard the voice of Jesus say', Vaughan Williams was bestowed the gift of taking a tune and placing it within a harmony and text with the power to heal, move and revive - to write for the people of the church in a way that serves those of all faiths and none.