THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Flat 17a,
38, Buckingham Gate,
S.W.1.

9 June l926

Dear Ralph

Bruce took me to night to hear Sancta Civitas, & I’ve just got back.¹ Of course, I couldn’t pretend at one hearing to have understood a fraction of its beauty, but what I did understand just knocked me out.  When I saw what the words were I was rather nervous.  If anyone took those words & made a mess of them, one would want his blood, but over & over again you showed new heights & depths & mysteries & niceties in them.  At the end I knew I’d heard one of the finest things in all music.  I mean that quite seriously. I’m still drunk with the thing, but also hopelessly sobered by it.  I know I’m no critic of music, I’d fancy the newspapers will have lots of clever things to say today.  But if you’ve spent all your life, as I have, in trying to understand beauty of all sorts, you can’t fail to know a great thing when you hear it; & I know for certain this is one of the great things.  It just catches one, brain, feeling, spirit & all, & hoicks one up into heaven.
Forgive all this burbling. I simply can’t help it.  I always knew you were rather a big boy; but now I know you’re one of the very biggest.
Yours

Harold Child²

1. Sancta Civitas, Catalogue of Works 1925/6, had received its first performance in London that evening in the Central Hall, Westminster, conducted by VW.
2. Leader writer on The Times, and librettist of Hugh the Drover.