THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.

31st May, 1947.

Dear Mrs. Thomson,

I do not quite know what to say about a work of mine.  I think good amateurs could do ‘Riders to the Sea’, but it requires an expert orchestra.  On the other hand, my ‘Shepherds’ has been done in a very moving manner by school boys with a partly amateur orchestra.¹  I do not see much point in scenes from ‘Sir John’.
I suppose you would not like a real low-down comic opera, ‘The Poisoned Kiss’; all these are published by the Oxford University Press.
Yrs sincerely

R. Vaughan Williams

1. VW may have been recalling a production that he attended at Charterhouse School on Sunday 5 March 1939.