THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking.

8th June, 1949

Dear Paddy

I did enjoy myself the other day. Your hospitality was wonderful and Mullinar¹ played magnificently.
Have you any objection to my telling Alan Frank of the O.U.P. of the remote possibility of a performance at Cambridge, or would you rather I kept it quite secret for the present? I think if he knew, he might be helpful.²
Now here is something else quite different. Is there in your music library at Cambridge a copy of “Treatise on Fugue” by Gedalge.³ I have to reissue my article on Fugue for Groves Dictionary and I want to quote what Gedalge says about how a subject ought to be divided up. He calls the beginning of a subject its head, but I cannot remember what he says further. I have lost my copy of the book.
Could you get some willing and competent scribe to copy out what he says about the head &c. of the subject?
Yrs

RVW

Dr Hadley,
Heacham,
King’s Lynn.

Note from recipient to Charles Cudworth:

I wonder if you would be kind enough to comply with this request. I told the OM I felt sure that you would be delighted to.
PASH

1.  Michael Mullinar.
2.  Hadley had expressed a private hope that a performance of Pilgrim’s Progress could be arranged at Cambridge. See VWL2976. See also VWL3113.
3.  André Gédalge, Traité de la fugue (Paris 1901). VW admired this work greatly – see VWL1461.