THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

10 Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, N.W.1.

[May 28 1955]

Sir,
In your issue of May 27 your Critic¹ complains that Miss Nancy Evans sang my song “The Water Mill” “too slowly”. I owe it to Miss Evans to explain that she sang it thus at my request. We rehearsed it together and came to the conclusion that that was the tempo required to achieve the dreamy nature of the song which is so often converted by singers into a smart patter-song.
Yours faithfully,
Ralph Vaughan Williams

1. Frank Howes. His review, on the 27th, was of the Wigmore Hall concert which included many VW works (Menelaus on the Beach at Pharos (1st in Britain), Linden Lea, In the Spring, Ward the Pirate, Songs of Travel, Along the Field (1st London performance in that name), Four Poems by Fredegond Shove, On Wenlock Edge, Merciless Beauty) performed by Nancy Evans, Richard Lewis, Keith Falkner, the Hirsch String Quartet & Michael Mullinar (“Mulliner” in the advert). Howes wrote that “Of Fredegond Shove’s four songs, which were written at a time when atmosphere seemed to be composers’ chief preoccupation in song writing, only “The Water Mill” has established itself; “The New Ghost” just fails to be another “Der Doppelgänger,” and a miss is unfortunately as good as a mile. In this connexion it must be said that Miss Nancy Evans sang “The Water Mill” too slowly and with too much tone—this is a parlando song.”