THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates
Dorking

March 5 [1945]

Dear Adrian

Thank you and your players very much for all the trouble they are taking over my string passages.¹  Peterkin² is much upset over the proposed alterations which will have to be altered in each part, of course. He says it has been played by many orchestras all over the world & no one has complained up to now.  Between ourselves do you think there is the necessity to alter & is P.B.³ making a fuss about nothing.  As to playing it pp – I always find that string quavers in the scherzo are, if anything, not prominent enough.
To my limited knowledge of the violin P.B’s passages do not seem easier than mine – but of course he knows best – but some of his alterations do not fit & I cannot use them as they stand
All this in confidence
You kindly sent me 2 proposed alterations – the cor anglais in the scherzo I have altered;  the other, I think, must be a wrong reference.
You say “Final 5 before (4) first cello surely should be E not F last note – but at that place the last note is D and the cellos are not divided!⁴
Thank you all v. much
Yrs

RVW

1.  This refers to passages in Symphony (No. 5) in D Major (Catalogue of Works 1943/2).
2.  Norman Peterkin, Head of the Music Department at Oxford University Press.
3.  Paul Beard, leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
4. Boult’s suggestion meant 5 bars before Fig. 4 in the Romanza, where the upper note in the second cellos on beat 3 remained as an F when the printed score appeared in 1946. This remained unchanged until the 2008 edition where it is changed to an E (as Boultsuggests!). On 14 March 1945, Vaughan Williams wrote to Norman Peterkin at OUP asking him to take in Paul Beard’s suggested revisions (VWL1878).