ABSTRACT
Flos Campi was first performed on 10 October 1925, two days before the fifty-third birthday of the composer. From the moment of its premiere, Flos Campi has been explored in the Ralph Vaughan Williams literature by a number of authors, who attempted to understand and elucidate its meaning, evaluate its compositional features, and debate its place in the canon of the composer. The manuscripts of Ralph Vaughan Williams form an unparalleled record of the composition process at various levels. The Ralph Vaughan Williams Collection is extraordinary by any definition, because it is one of the largest extant accumulations of a major composer's autographs. In 1960 Ursula Vaughan Williams presented to the British Museum approximately 200 manuscript and printed sources of the composer's music, and this bequest now is the foundation of the British Library's Ralph Vaughan Williams Collection.
