Although the musical archives of the world have yielded up their fair share of ‘lost’ or forgotten early works by the great composers, few might be regarded with more surprise and excitement than A Cambridge Mass by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was completed in 1899 shortly before his 27th birthday and was successfully submitted for the Cambridge degree of Doctor of Music, but remained unperformed and unpublished till now.

The work that has emerged from more than a century of obscurity is indee...