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
Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) His student, the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, claimed that he had borrowed the opening theme of the first movement from her "Sinfonietta for Small Orchestra in D minor" (1935), and that she in turn borrowed it back for her opera "The Transposed Heads" (1953). Glanville-Hicks did not complete her "Sinfonietta" until three months after the premiere of Vaughan Williams's symphony, but she was writing it at the same time as the composition of the symphony. Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) The Symphony No. 4 in F minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams was dedicated by the composer to Arnold Bax. Unlike