THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.

5th November, 1952.

I have got a great many letters of yours to answer, but before that I am sending you herewith a copy of some notes which have been discovered by Müller Hartmann about my “Partita”. They might come in useful to you some time, at all events perhaps you could put them among your archives.¹
With regard to the Prelude on the old Carol tune. The incidental music for the “Mayor of Casterbridge” remains as it was with the Bristol B.B.C. and will presumably be used by them if ever they revive the play. But in addition to that I have arranged the music for a Fantasia, which I call by the above title. I hope that is clear now!²
I have heard from the Arts Council about their proposed part song and I have conditionally accepted, but have told them that I must choose my own words and that you must be the Publishers, if you wish to be as far as my work is concerned.³  John Denison also phoned 6 Nov. to say that he had agreed to write a short unacc. piece for Crntn.⁴
I am sending the score of my Fourth Symphony. Will you please kindly send it on to the Tuba player of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I will inscribe it with my compliments.⁵
RVW

1.  VW had already sent this note to Oxford University Press – see VWL2090, where it is transcribed.
2. This paragraph is written in elucidation of VWL2527.
3. VW contributed a part-song ‘Silence and music’, a setting of words by UVW, as no.4 in A Garland for the Queen: a collection of partsongs by ten British composers made as a tribute to Elizabeth II in the year of her coronation.
4. i.e. Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
5. See VWL2529. Frank had written on 29th October reporting that Dmitri Mitropoulos was to perform the Fourth Symphony with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in December and that ‘apparently the 1st tuba player, Vicent Venni, is such an admirer of your music and in particular of the Tuba part of this Symphony that he has asked whether we can possibly sell him the tuba part so that he can keep it permanently! It is really rather touching’.