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.
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Featured Letter
from Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 1872-1958 to Foote, Guthrie
Letter No. VWL2388
Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Guthrie Foote (OUP)
Letter No.: VWL2388
The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.
3rd April 1952
To confirm telephone conversation
Dear Foote
About two years ago I gave a private performance here of a small work for a chorus and orchestra with reciter, which Alan Frank heard, and I think approved of.1
I have now revised it and Mr. Rose2 of Queen’s College, Oxford wants to do it with his choir. There is not time, even if you were willing, to get the work out before June, when they want to perform it, but they propose that they should photograph sufficient vocal parts off the original manuscript for their purposes.
What I want to know is, how will this affect you if we ever propose to publish it? Perhaps you will let me know your opinion about this, because Mr. Rose naturally wants the vocal parts as soon as possible.3
Yrs
R. Vaughan Williams
G. Foote, Esq.,
Oxford University Press.
1. An Oxford Elegy, Catalogue of Works 1949/2. The performance was given by the Tudor Singers under Harry Stubbs on 20th November 1949.
2. Bernard Rose, Organist of Queens College, Oxford 1939-1957 and of Magdalen College, Oxford 1957-1981. An Oxford Elegy was performed by The Eglesfield Musical Society with Steuart Wilson, conducted by Bernard Rose in the Hall of Queen’s College, Oxford, on Thursday 19 June 1952. Wilson was in tears at the end. Afterwards “we drove back with the Finzis to Ashmansworth” (RVW: a biography, p.321). They returned to London next day.
3. Foote replied on 4th April that Oxford University Press would publish the work and that when Rose had finished with the parts they should be sent to OUP and would be available to him thereafter without charge.
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Typewritten, signed.
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Shelfmark:File 2008H
