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
Ralph Vaughan Williams the "Tallis Fantasia", with which it has elements in common, both in terms of instrumental layout and the mood of rapt contemplation. The violin sonata has made little impact. Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote of her husband's love of literature, and listed some of his favourite writers and writings: In addition to his love of poetry, Vaughan Williams's vocal music is inspired by his lifelong belief that the voice "can be made the medium of the best and deepest human emotion." Between the mid-1890s and the late 1950s Vaughan Williams set more than eighty poems for voice and piano accompaniment. The