THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth

Letter No. VWL4967

Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth

Letter No.: VWL4967


13 Cheyne Walk
SW 3

29/8/23

Dear Sir Alexander1
Morris2 has passed on to me the enclosed correspondence – I feel that anything which makes George’s work better known is worth doing – I wd suggest your writing to the man & telling him to send you his arrangement and that if you approved of it you wd give him leave to publish it.
Morris writes “I have none (views) to speak of, slightly against perhaps, if anything”
Yrs sincerely
R Vaughan Williams

P.S. I do hope Miss Mavor’s marriage will not rob her (and you) from the Bach choir!3


1. Sir Alexander was the father of the composer George Butterworth, who had been killed in action.
2. R. O. Morris, composer and close friend of Butterworth, and brother-in-law of VW. The enclosures do not survive, and the work arranged has not been identified.
3. Dorothea Mavor, step-daughter of Alexander Butterworth ad his wife Dorothea, had recently married William (later Sir William) Croft. VW was conductor of the Bach Choir at this time.