RVW’s Letters

ABOUT THE LETTERS

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s correspondence - with his friends, family, pupils and fellow musicians - paints an intriguing portrait of the man, as well as providing fascinating insights into his major preoccupations: musical, personal and political.

The VWF database includes transcripts of over 5,000 items of annotated correspondence, fully indexed and searchable, which can all be read online. It includes all the letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams known to the editors and is an ongoing project. Find out more about the database.

The text of letters written by Ralph Vaughan Williams remains in the copyright of the Vaughan Williams Foundation and may not be further reproduced without the prior written consent of the Foundation.

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Featured Letter

from Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 1872-1958 to Howells, Herbert, 1892-1983

Letter No. VWL1608

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Herbert Howells

Letter No.: VWL1608

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

Oct 12 [1939]

Dear Herbert

How good of you to write and send me all the messages from all my friends – to whom I request you to send my love with suitable actions.1
As to me there is nothing to report – I try to make myself useful in the small ways that come my way – committees etc & starting the village choirs going (they are all keen to carry on)2
I am also “digging for victory” – preparing a potato patch for next year when it will probably be all we shall have to live on
Also an essay on the 9th symphony!!3  How are you?  Has all this hit you very hard materially?  Urge the young people to keep their music going – so that they shall be there to carry on when we return to sanity
The latest bee in my bonnet is “Federal Union”  (Have you read Streit’s “Union Now” – you should, it is I believe the only solution). I am trying to get a branch started in Dorking.4
Yrs

RVW

1.  Presumably Howells had written with 67th birthday greetings from VW’s friends at St Paul’s Girls School. The ‘actions’ were probably kisses.
2.  Although the Leith Hill Musical Festival had ceased in the First World War, in the second it continued to take place.
3.  VW’s essay ‘Some thoughts on Beethoven’s Choral Symphony’ was eventually published in his collection of writings under that title in 1953.
4.  Clarence K Streit, Union Now: A Plea for a Union of the Democratic Nations (London, 1939). A meeting of the Federal Union organisation had just been held in London on 4 October and had declared the following general aim: ‘I believe in a Federal Union of free peoples under a common government elected by and responsible to the people for their common affairs, with national self-government for national affairs as a first step towards democratic self-government for the prevention of war, the creation of prosperity and the preservation and promotion of individual liberty.’

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A teacher's advice is not meant to be taken like a Pill but thought about & then: 1) adopted, or (2) rejected, or (perhaps best of all) (3) a 3rd course suggests itself from thinking the matter over.

RVW letter to GRACE WILLIAMS 1920

New York on the 26th, lecture at Yale on the 1st. Sail on the 4th. Ralph is terrifically well and bouncy and THRIVES on milkshakes and butterscotch sundaes.

UVW letter from New York to Michael and Eslyn Kennedy 1954

Most of Stravinsky bores me. I wish he even shocked me: especially the Rite of Spring...but I do like Symphony of Psalms, Les Noces, and the Suite for Violin and Pianoforte, of which I once heard a record under very peculiar circumstances, of which I will tell you one day.

RVW letter to MICHAEL KENNEDY 1957

You have never lost your invention but it has not developed enough.  Your best – your most original and beautiful style or ‘atmosphere’ is an indescribable sort of feeling as if one was listening to very lovely lyrical poetry.

GUSTAV HOLST letter to RVW 1903