THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, SURREY.

28th June, 1950.

I know that passage well and remember hearing the rehearsal of what, I believe, was the first performance.¹
I remember hearing Harford Lloyd talk in admiration of it to Bantock.² He (Bantock) said, rather tentatively it seemed to him to be an imitation of Bach’s ‘Wachet Auf.’!
I am writing to Brooke³ and enclose a copy of my letter.
Love to Joyce
Yrs

RVW

(R. Vaughan Williams).

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

1.  The work in question is Parry’s cantata Beyond these Voices, identified in the enclosure to this letter, which is VWL5003. The passage referred to is ‘To everything there is a season’. The cantata was first heard at Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, on the afternoon of Wednesday 9 September 1908. VW probably did not attend in 1908, but there were often London rehearsals, some of them at the Royal College of Music.
2. Granville Bantock, composer, and Charles Harford Lloyd, composer and organist.
3. Harold Brooke, of Novello & Company. See VWL5003.