Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust
13 Cheyne Walk
Chelsea
London
S.W.3.
Dear Sir
I fear there is no chance of my being able to revise my symphony for a long time to come. However, I do not think that the revisions will make much difference to the size of the work (if any thing it will be shorter) so I am sending the score to Messrs Stainer & Bell so that they may give their estimate.1
Yrs faithfully
R. Vaughan Williams
1. The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust had chosen A London Symphony, Catalogue of Works 1913/5, for inclusion in their Carnegie Collection of British Music published by Stainer & Bell (see VWL429 and VWL430). VW progressively made cuts and alterations in all movements of A London Symphony except the first, both then and subsequently, until the final version was established in 1933. See Catalogue of Works 1913/5 and Stephen Lloyd, 'Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony: the original version and early performances and recordings', in Vaughan Williams in Perspective, edited by Lewis Foreman (London, 1998), pp.91-117.