THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

(Holiday address)
c/o Mr Tom Booth
Moorside Farm
Askwith
nr. Otley
Yorks.

19.9.24

My dear Vaughan Williams

I want to quote in my Second Book of the Gramophone Record, and also in an article in the journal, The Gramophone, some part of Mrs Coates’s programme notes for the first American performance of the London Symphony.
Mrs Coates quite approves, but thinks I should have your approval also, and this I hope you will not refuse.¹
I am quoting also your own notes from a programme in 1920, which make it clear that the music is to be enjoyed as music.
I think the best thing I can do is just to send you a typed copy of the article, and to ask you to return it to me with your sanction.
I hope you will not make any difficulties, and I really think that when you find a journalist so conscientious as I am now showing myself to be, you ought to encourage him as much as ever you can.  You will observe in the article that my description of the piece is a description of it as music, not as a picture of London.  In other words, though I have tried to capture the imagination of the gramophonist by telling him something of what you had in your mind when you wrote the piece, I have not encouraged him to try to trace your thoughts bar by bar.
Please let me have this copy of the article back at once, as it is wanted for printing.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,

1. For her letter to Scholes see VWL568; for VW’s reply see VWL570.