THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From
The Vice Chancellor,
The University,
Sheffield.

Feb 23 1926

Dear Vaughan Williams

Very many thanks for a most interesting book – the best Anthology of Religious ‘Music & Letters’ that has yet appeared.  I grind my teeth with envy at some of your finds.¹
Our little hymn book – begun seven years ago & hampered by every obstacle that could get in its way, is now in the press & is once more suspended for a time by poor Davies’ illness.  (I am glad to see good reports of the operation, but he will be out of work for some time to come).²  I am much interested to observe that in fitting tunes and words together we have not infrequently hit on the same combination as you have.  But you extend far beyond our boundaries.  I hope that you will have all success.
Yours ever

W.H. Hadow

1. The first edition of Songs of Praise had been published in 1925.
2. Hymns of Western Europe, London 1927. One of the editors was Walford Davies.