Search the letters

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.

Filter letters

Letter No. Title Date Date on Letter
VWL2027 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to John Ireland 19460207 Feb 7 1946
VWL4834 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Clive Carey 19460130 January 30 [1946]
VWL2026 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Douglas Lilburn 19460115 Jan 15 [1946]
VWL4672 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Cordelia Curle 19460105 Saturday night [5.1.46]
VWL2025 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Robert Trevelyan 19460101 New Year's Day [1946]
VWL1774 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Denis Dowling 194601-- [late 1945 or early 1946]
VWL4836 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Clive Carey 194601-- [before 25 January, 1946]
VWL4835 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Clive Carey 194601-- [?January, 1946]
VWL2903 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Robert Müller Hartmann 1946---- [1946 or later]
VWL1728 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Ann Boult 1946---- Sunday [1946]
VWL4559 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Clive Carey 1946---- [early 1946]
VWL3640 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Edmund Rubbra 1946---- [1946]
VWL4525 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Martin Shaw 1946-- [November, 1946]
VWL2024 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Douglas Lilburn 19451226 Dec 26 [1945]
VWL2023 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to E.J. Dent 19451211 Dec 11 [c1945?]
VWL2022 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Imogen Holst 19451206 Dec 6 [1945]
VWL2021 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gerald Finzi 19451122 Nov 22 [1945]
VWL2020 Oxford University Press file note on Ralph Vaughan Williams’s English version of Bach’s B minor Mass by Norman Peterkin 19451120 20.11.45
VWL2019 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Geoffrey Keynes 19451117 November 17 [?1945]
VWL2015 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gerald Finzi 19451108 Nov 8 [1945]
VWL4668 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Cordelia Curle 19451106 Tueday [Nov 6 1945]
VWL2013 Letter from Gerald Finzi to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19451105 [5 November 1945]
VWL2902 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Robert Müller-Hartmann 19451103 Nov 3 [1945?]
VWL5139 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Cranleigh Choral Society 19451102 Nov 2 [1945]
VWL2012 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Norman Peterkin (OUP) 19451027 Oct 27 [1945]
VWL2011 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Joyce Hooper 19451026 Oct 26 [1945]
VWL2007 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gerald Finzi 19451021 Oct 21 [1945]
VWL2009 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Norman Peterkin (OUP) 19451021 Oct. 21 [1945]
VWL2006 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gerald Finzi 19451015 Oct 15 [1945]
VWL4181 Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Christopher le Fleming 19451015 Oct 15 [ca 1945]

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