Gerontius, Kodály's Missa Brevis and Vaughan Williams's Job, at the 1948 Three Choirs Festival. When Vaughan Williams heard that the University of Durham was going to confer an Honorary D.Mus on Rubbra in 1949, he wrote him a very short letter: "I am delighted to hear of the honour which Durham University is conferring on itself." Rubbra received a request from the BBC to write a piece for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The result was Ode to the Queen, for voice and orchestra, to Elizabethan words. In connection with the same celebration, he was invited by Benjamin Britten to contribute to a collaborative work, a set of Variations on an Elizabethan Theme. He initially accepted, but later withdrew; Britten then asked Arthur Oldham and Humphrey Searle to take his place. On Rubbra's retirement from Oxford, in 1968, he did not stop working; he merely took up more teaching at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where his students included Michael Garrett and Christopher Gunning. Neither did he stop composing. Indeed, he kept up this activity right until the end of his life. He had, in fact, started a 12th Symphony in March 1985, less than a year before his death. He died in Gerrards Cross on 14 February 1986. Ronald Stevenson summed up the style of Rubbra's work rather succinctly when he wrote, "In an age of fragmentation, Rubbra stands (with a few others) as a composer of a music of oneness". Sir Adrian Boult commended Rubbra's work by saying that he "has never made any effort to popularize anything he has done, but he goes on creating masterpieces". Personal life Rubbra was married three times, firstly in 1925 to his landlady Lilian Duncan. This marriage was never consummated and in 1933 Rubbra married Antoinette Chaplin, a French violinist. They toured Italy together, as well as giving recitals in Paris and radio broadcasts. They had two sons, Francis (1935–2012) and Benedict (born 1938, painter), with the marriage lasting into the late 1950s. In the 1930s Rubbra was a pacifist and vegetarian but gave up vegetarianism during World War II whilst he was in the army out of fear of starvation. He was a devout Catholic but went through a Buddhist phase and was interested in mysticism. In 1975, Rubbra married Colette Yardley, with whom he had had one son (born 1974) called Adrian. Colette was at the