Ralph Vaughan Williams composed Concerto for Bass Tuba in 1954. This magnificent piece was originally created for the London Symphony Orchestra, and the featured soloist was the orchestra's tuba player, Philip Catalinet. The concerto consists of three distinct movements: PRELUDE Allegro moderato, ROMANZA Andante sostenuto, and FINALE - RONDO ALLA TEDESCA Allegro. The piece itself was originally thought of as quite peculiar, and dismissed as the crazed ramblings of an aging, senile composer, as it was one of his later works, and he was 82 years of age upon completing this piece. Now the public appreciates it for the masterpiece that it is, and any respectable tuba player has this piece in his or her repertoire, as well as a large number of bass trombone players. To understand how this wonderful piece of music came together the way it did, it is necessary to not only understand the major regional and world events of the time period, but also the personal and family life of the composer himself.
Ralph Vaughan Williams finished composing his famous tuba concerto less than a decade after one of the most impactful events of not only European history, but all of human history: the Second World War. World War II was set in motion when Adolph Hitler began a campaign of invasion and assimilation of several countries across Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In 1939, Vaughan Williams' home country of Great Britain, as well as France, declared War on Hitler's Nazi Regime. Shortly following The United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany, all of Europe - and eventually all of the world - began taking sides. On one side stood Adolf Hitler, and his allies Italy and Japan, seeking to undue the damage done to his people - viewed by him as a race that was objectively superior to all of the rest of humanity - in World War I, and to assert his dominance over the world.