 |
||||||
| Timelines | ||||||
 |
||||||
| Resources | ||||||||||||||||
 The Vaughan Williams Collection Surrey Performing Arts Library, Dorking, Surrey (situated on Denbies Wine Estate) Although born in Gloucester Ralph Vaughan Williams had strong connections with the Dorking area for most of his life. He was the first conductor of the Leith Hill Festival – a post he held from 1905 until 1953. His family home, Leith Hill Place, is a few miles south from the library and the road on which his Dorking home, White Gates stood and where he lived with his first wife, Adeline, is but a short distance away. Among the major pieces he composed in Dorking were: Five Tudor Portraits (1936)
|
 |
Because of the local connections, the Surrey County Library had accrued much material connected with the composer and the Leith Hill Festival, so in the 1970s an attempt was made to establish a Ralph Vaughan Williams Collection of published books on the composer, reprints of his own writings, new publications and editions of his scores and some of the now vast quantity of his music issued on compact disc. The collection contains no manuscript music, letters, original documents or pictures however from time to time exhibitions of original VW material are held. The collection comprises around 70 books, 300 scores, 200 LP records, 100 compact discs, all of which are available for loan directly from the Performing Arts Library. Some of the publications are quite rare. The Surrey Performing Arts Library is located in the Denbies Building, a breathtaking location amongst the vineyards of the Estate (see above) and is well worth a visit. There is free parking, a cafeteria and a shop. Most of the collection is listed in the Surrey Library catalogue, available at the Performing Arts Library, at all other Surrey libraries and on the internet. This is not a research collection. (RVW manuscripts, mostly donated by Ursula Vaughan Williams are held at the British Library and elsewhere.) nb: There is an RVW study centre at Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey. For more information or to hire orchestral parts contact Graham Muncy Senior Librarian at the Performing Arts Library. For information on English Folk, Dance and songs and not necessarily with reference to Vaughan Williams visit the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library where indexes to the collections of some of the best-known folk music collectors of the twentieth century are now available on the Library's website - http://library.efdss.org The bookstock is listed in: |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
