THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Cedric Thorpe Davie

Letter No. VWL970

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Cedric Thorpe Davie

Letter No.: VWL970


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

9 August 1936

Dear Cedric

All right – send the Full score – I can pretend to read it while really looking at the 2 staves underneath.1
No news of the Finzi family yet – though we’ve written.2
Yrs

RVW


1. The score of Gammer Gurton’s Needle, see VWL963. The two staves were a piano reduction of the orchestra parts – he had asked Davie to send a vocal score on the grounds that he couldn’t read an orchestral score!
2. Nigel Finzi was due – and indeed was born on the day this letter was written. See Stephen Banfield, Gerald Finzi: an English Composer (London, 1997) p.222.