THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Music Publishers’ Association, Ltd.,
9A, Sackville Street, W.1.

[Friday December 23, 1955]

Sir
May we add our voices to the chorus of disapproval and protest over the new postage rates for printed matter? It is perhaps not widely realized that the sheet music trade and the culture and enjoyment flowing from it depend very largely on vast numbers of small dispatches daily from music publishers and wholesalers to music shops, and from shops to private and professional musicians.
Everyone is aware of the enormous importance to music of the many thousands of amateurs in the country, and of the professionals who are working away from the large cultural centres; practical music making is being assailed by all sorts of mechanical instruments, and this new impost will inevitably do further harm to an art the personal enjoyment of which depends to a surprising extent on cheap postage rates.
Yours faithfully,
Ralph Vaughan Williams, President, Composers’ Guild of Great Britain;
Guy Warrack, Chairman, Composers’ Guild of Great Britain;
Ken Straker, Chairman, Music Publishers’ Association;
F.D. Morley, President, Music Trades’ Association