ABSTRACT
After the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams on 26 August 1958, his widow and the Oxford University Press decided to make public four previously unpublished songs that the composer had been working on intermittently during the four last years of his life. He also makes the suggestion that, since he has agreed with the Oxford University Press to list them as three songs from 'Four Last Songs', Mrs Vaughan Williams refer briefly in the programme note to the song that is not included on the programme. In the information provided by the National Gallery's Micro Gallery computer system, we are told that the subject of the painting could indeed be the death of Procris. We may never know, precisely, whether or not the Four Last Songs are indeed fragments of two projected song cycles, with 'Procris' and 'Menelaus' included in one cycle and 'Tired' and 'Hands, Eyes and Heart' in another, as suggested by Mrs Vaughan Williams.
