Vaughan Williams was born in Gloucestershire. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and at Trinity College in Cambridge. Then he studied abroad with Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris. A dedicated musicologist, he collected and catalogued over 800 English folk songs; this work led to his editing the new English Hymnal of 1906, to which he added several new hymns of his own. In compositions such as his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1909) he acknowledged his strong debt to historical sources. In general, his music often evokes both reverence for England's bucolic past and a modern meditiation upon its inevitable passing.