THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates
Westcott Road
Dorking

[About January 1933]

Dear Gustav

For our sake you must keep well – but for the sake of music you must go on writing canons – so try and combine the two.¹
I like especially Fields of Sorrow & David’s Lament – the two big ones I feel I am going to like – but can’t vizualize² them yet.  I liked the old Trio³ – but always felt that its being in 3 keys was more seen by the eye than felt by the ear.  After all, ‘Lovely Venus’ depends a lot on the ‘natural chord’ doesn’t it?  I don’t think I like your notation.  After all, key signatures are simply a means of avoiding accidentals – isn’t that so?  And I believe that on the balance you w^d get fewer accidentals by putting a christian key signature – & not, incidentally, make unhappy people like me who try to play them on the pfte permanently cross-eyed.
Let me hear them soon – we are perhaps coming to London for a week round Feb 1^st.⁴
Yrs

RVW

1. Holst had completed six of Eight canons for equal voices, H.187, in 1932 during VW’s absence in the USA. A further two were added in 1933.
2. sic.
3. i.e. the Terzetto.
4. VW’s Piano Concerto, Catalogue of Works 1931/3, was to be given its first performance by Harriet Cohen at the Queen’s Hall on 1st February.