THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.

18th March, 1953.

Thank you so much for your letter.  It was a great pleasure to have you and your Wife with us the other day, and your assistance at rehearsal was splendid.¹

The answer to your rhetorical question is, “I don’t know”, because I know nothing about the technique of singing myself.

I don’t know whether you saw the “Times”.  It was filled with unwilling admiration.²

Yours sincerely,
R. Vaughan Williams
(R. Vaughan Williams).

I do hope your “John”³ went well

H. Byard, Esq.,
4, Randall Road,
Clifton, Bristol.

1. Byard had apparently attended the annual performance of Bach’s Passion music by the Dorking Bach Choir, to which VW had invited him. See VWL2653.
2. The Times review was published on the 15^th, including: “In every case Dr. Vaughan Williams gives imagination its head and sacrifices to it historical considerations. The result is almost overwhelmingly impressive, but not utterly because of a few features which offend against style. He conducts it with a far greater devotion than he ever brings to his own work: not a point of texture misses him, nor does he fail in the mechanics of those combined operations with two choirs, children’s choir in figured chorales, and audience. The chorales are indeed the key to his interpretation of the work. ”
3. A reference to Byard’s performance of Bach’s St John Passion.