THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

13 Cheyne Walk
S.W.

Nov 19th 1907

Dear Shaw,
I liked the church music you showed me extremely.  The great difficulty about church music at present seems to be this – it is obviously useless to produce mere weak imitations of the old style – and yet it is equally obvious that the highly coloured sensational music which we usually hear in churches, even if it were good in its self, w^d be quite unsuitable to a service which is based on immemorial custom and of which the very language is that of the 17^th century.
Your music seems to me to me¹ to have to contain the qualities which are just the opposite of this.  It is individual, modern, strong and healthy – but it fits admirably with the quiet and old-established dignity of the English church ritual.
yrs v truly
R. Vaughan Williams

1.  sic.