Correspondents
Resource type
Book chapter
Creator (person)
Cobbe, Hugh
Date published
2024
Abstract
In ‘Correspondents’, Hugh Cobbe reflects on the benefits for the study of composers that arise from the corpus of their letters. He describes the collection of the letters of Vaughan Williams, which he and his successor editors have built up to form a database of over 5,000 items that are publicly available online. Describing Vaughan Williams’s connections in terms of concentric circles of decreasing intimacy, he demonstrates what the correspondence reveals about the composer and his world. Relations with his two wives, Adeline and Ursula, are discussed and then relations with his close friends Ralph Wedgwood, Gustav Holst, Martin Shaw, Gerald Finzi, and Michael Kennedy. Thereafter the circles widen to include Adeline Fisher’s relations, his fellow composers, his Royal College of Music pupils, those conductors and soloists who regularly performed his works, his collaborators, and the critics who wrote about him. Cobbe also describes his concerns with non-musical issues, such as the release of interned German refugee musicians, and his enthusiasm for Federal Union as a movement for future peace. Overall, the letters provide a clear picture of Vaughan Williams’s breadth of vision and largeness of mind.
Book title
Vaughan Williams in Context
Editor
Onderdonk, Julian
Owen, Ceri
Pagination
27-34
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Place of publication
Cambridge
Official URL