THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.

16th April, 1952.

I know Philip Cannon’s works for female voices.  I like them up to a point but thought they were almost affectedly simple; also I cannot ask any respectable ladies’ choir in my district to sing that song about Bacchus. I wish people would think more of who is to sing their work. They are not all intellectuals who read “The New Statesman”. I will send his name to Margery Cullen, our Secretary.¹ Of course there will be no further adjudication until next April and I find that though the choirs leave everything else to me they allow me to have no say in the question of the adjudicators.
I wish I could have gone to John Russell’s² concert, but there is such a lot to do just now.
I hope we shall meet in June for Bernard Rose’s concert.³  
My love to Joyce
Yrs
RVW

(R. Vaughan Williams).

Gerald Finzi, Esq.,
Ashmansworth,
near Newbury, Berks.

1. i.e. of the Leith Hill Music Festival.
2. Russell taught at the Royal College of Music and lived at Reading. He had private means and had put on a concert devoted to Finzi’s music at Newbury.
3. The first performance of An Oxford Elegy at Queen’s College, Oxford. See VWL2262.