THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.

15th November, 1950.

Dear Burnard
I have been reading your Harmony Book with great interest. You make the teaching eminently practical but at the same time never dry and you always refer back to the Great Masters.
In your next edition I wish you would put in the enclosed specimen of “common or garden consecutive fifths from Bach”; also as regards the “Neapolitan Sixth” – does not this also derive from the Phrygian Mode and is it not called “Neapolitan” because so many Neapolitan Folk Songs and popular songs have the Phrygian cadences?
Yrs sincerely
R Vaughan Williams

(R. Vaughan Williams).

Dr. Burnard,
c/o Messrs. Angus & Roberton, Ltd.,
89 to 95, Castlereagh Street,
Sydney, Australia

Encl. [musical image]
Bach St Matthew Passion No 48 (chorus) bar 4