Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Edward J. Dent

Dear Dent

Many thanks for your letter - I wish I could come to hear the Marlowe Society - This is my busiest time of the year - I am off on Monday to the Isle of Man (if I ever get there!) to judge. I was awfully interested in the Spaniard’s views - I wonder if he was one of the 30 or 40 people who were introduced to me after the concert¹ - They were all very nice and friendly and complimentary - there was a party after the concert in the shop of a music publisher called Mathot - champagne flowing like water.
Have you ever heard of a composer called Eric Satie - Ravel has, apparently discovered him - he was doing all the Debussy tricks in 1887 before D. was invented. - They are not much in themselves but are interesting as fore-runners.
V. D’Indy on Brahms is interesting - I sh^d say just the same of D’Indy himself.²
Yrs

R. Vaughan Williams

1. Possibly the performance of On Wenlock Edge in Paris on 29 February 1912 - see R.V.W.: a biography, pp.102-3.
2. Possibly a reference to D'Indy's critique of Brahms in his Cours de composition musicale, of which the first volume was published in 1912.