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The Vaughan Williams Foundation has made over 5000 items freely available: chiefly letters from Ralph Vaughan Williams, but including some responses which shed light on the subject matter, and also a number of letters from Adeline and Ursula Vaughan Williams. These provide further information and often include messages or observations from Ralph, and there are also letters from Adeline and Ursula written on behalf of the couple. The text of letters written by RVW and UVW remain the copyright of the Foundation.

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The letters are in tabular form and can be sorted by column, or filtered by any keyword including name, musical title, year or subject (singly or in combination). Partial matches will also be found, e.g. searching “sky” will also find “Stravinsky”. To search for a phrase use inverted commas, e.g. “New York”.

To search by letter number, include the prefix VWL, e.g. VWL123.

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Letter No. Title Date Date on Letter
VWL1810 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Ann Boult 19431015 October 15 [1943]
VWL1882 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Ann Boult 19490317 March 17 [1949]
VWL1643 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Ann Boult 19391128 Nov 28 [1939]
VWL3732 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Alice Sumsion 19490225 Feb 25 [1949]
VWL717 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Cordelia Curle 19350603 June 3 [1935]
VWL2939 Letter from Adeline Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gerald Finzi 19481230 December 30 [1948]
VWL4455 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to René Gatty 19000409 April 9th, [1900]
VWL2187 Letter from A.L.P. Norrington to Norman Peterkin (OUP) 19470612 12th June, 1947.
VWL1831 Letter from A.H. Fox-Strangways to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19431225 Xmas 1943
VWL367 Letter from A.E. Housman to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19101203 3 Dec. l910
VWL174 Letter from A.E. Housman to Ralph Vaughan Williams 190910-- [October 1909]
VWL4830 Letter (extract) from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Evelyn Sharp 193601-- [between 15 January and February, 1936]
VWL2877 Internal Oxford University Press memo re Vaughan Williams by Lyle Dowling 19540921 21 September, 1954
VWL2950 Foreword from Ralph Vaughan Williams to the Society for the Promotion of New Music 195403-- [About March 1954]
VWL151 Draft notes by Ralph Vaughan Williams relating to Cecil Sharp’s English Folksongs (London 1907) 190705-- [?May 1907]
VWL3112 Contribution to a party game 19491110 [10 November 1949]
VWL699 Completed registration form for Ralph Vaughan Williams’s cultural national service 193908-- [Summer 1939]
VWL1527 BBC Public Statement 19410314 14th March, 1941
VWL1689 BBC internal memorandum from Sir Adrian Boult to Arthur Bliss 19420915 September 15th 1942
VWL1672 BBC internal memorandum from Kenneth A. Wright, BBC 19420629 29th June, 1942.
VWL3221 Address from Ralph Vaughan Williams to the English Folk Dance and Song Society 19551112 November 12th 1955.
VWL3505 ‘The Fifteenth Variation’: Transcript of VW’s contribution to Elgar Centenary Programme on the BBC from the recording 195705-- [May 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

He was one of the most 'complete' men I have ever known. He loved life, he loved work and his interest in all music was unquenchable and insatiable.

SIR JOHN BARBIROLLI, conductor

I was thunderstruck by the symphony last night - and hadn't expected to be. Jagged, pulsating and angry, from that very first clanging dissonance - how can it have come from the same source as the Tallis Fantasia?

AUDIENCE MEMBER, Newbury Festival