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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
VWL421 Letter from Charles Hubert Parry to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19150119 Jany 19. 1915
VWL3738 Letter from Alan Bush to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19450109 Jan 9th, 1945.
VWL4359 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Victor Sheppard 19471029 October 29 [1947]
VWL429 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust 19170409 April 9th [1917]
VWL4674 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Mrs Lock 19421025 October 25, [1942]
VWL4361 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Mary Watts 19480702 July 2 [1948]
VWL4356 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Mary Watts 19480310 March 10 [1948]
VWL4293 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Martin Shaw 19150630 June 30th, [1915]
VWL4314 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Martin Shaw 19140817 Monday [17 August, 1914]
VWL1469 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Joy Finzi 19401103 Sunday [3rd November 1940]
VWL2895 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Genia Hornstein 1942---- Friday [?1942 or later]
VWL4671 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Cordelia Curle 1945---- Monday [1945]
VWL1887 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Cordelia Curle 19450509 Wednesday [May 9 1945]
VWL1810 Letter from Adeline Vaughan Williams to Ann Boult 19431015 October 15 [1943]
VWL1831 Letter from A.H. Fox-Strangways to Ralph Vaughan Williams 19431225 Xmas 1943
VWL2166 Internal BBC memorandum to the Home News Editor from Sir Adrian Boult 19470418 April 18th 1947
VWL699 Completed registration form for Ralph Vaughan Williams’s cultural national service 193908-- [Summer 1939]
VWL1527 BBC Public Statement 19410314 14th March, 1941

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