Ralph Vaughan Williams after Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli are Vernon Handley, Richard Hickox, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Andrew Davis. Record companies with extensive lists of Vaughan Williams recordings include EMI, Decca, Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos. Vaughan Williams refused a knighthood at least once, and declined the post of Master of the King's Music after Elgar's death. The one state honour he accepted was the Order of Merit in 1935, which confers no prenominal title: he preferred to remain "Dr Vaughan Williams". His academic and musical honours included an honorary doctorate of music from the University of Oxford (1919); the Cobbett medal for
Four Hymns (Vaughan Williams) Four Hymns (Vaughan Williams) Four Hymns, set to music for tenor voice with the accompaniment of pianoforte and viola obbligato, is a liturgical song cycle composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Following the composition of Five Mystical Songs in 1911, Vaughan Williams began to compose a smaller scale piece, which was completed in 1914. However, World War I delayed the presentation of the song cycle until 1920. In setting the four hymns to music, Vaughan Williams chose poems by Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Watts, Richard Crashaw, and Robert Bridges (a translation from the Greek). The cycle is sometimes called "Four Hymns for