Vaughan Williams, Ralph.

being his copy of The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, the vocal score (Oxford, 1925), heavily revised, the new music mounted on the printed pages, and with a new autograph title ("The Pilgrims Progress Act IV Scene 2 (up to figure 25 this is updated from an earlier work)..."), inscribed by the composer over the music in blue-black ink and on the cover in pencil ("(PP Act IV, Scene 2, book 3"), with autograph annotations and deletions marked in the printed score, with some differences from the published edition, including to the metronome marking ("84"), and stage directions ("3 shepherds kneeling")



the autograph manuscript of the revised ending (5 pages) (Figure "25a"), mounted in the score, the words beginning "[Let not the] Water flood drown me", notated in vocal score, for the Pilgrim, 3 Shepherds, 4-part chorus and piano, in blue-black ink, on up to twelve staves per page, with deletions, revisions and alterations, annotated in pencil ("To Copyist, do not copy the German or the instrumentation"), comprising twenty-eight bars music 



the edition 36 pages in all, some 15 of which with revisions and annotations by the composer, folio (c.34 x 25.5cms), [London?, 1949-1951], publisher's brown wrappers, tear and browning to front cover, the additional music on 12-stave manuscript paper, affixed by the composer with brown tape slightly obscuring the text in places

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This is Vaughan Williams's autograph revision of The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, for Act Four, Scene two of his opera The Pilgrim's Progress, premiered at Covent Garden on 26 April 1951.

Although Vaughan Williams was an agnostic, he always had a strong sense of music's social power and purpose. He planned an early opera based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and returned to the theme regularly throughout his career, including a staged version of twelve episodes given at Reigate Priory in 1906. The Pastoral Episode entitled "The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains" was composed in 1921 and staged a number of times between the wars.

In this manuscript, Vaughan WIlliams incorporates the earlier Episode into the final operatic version. It includes his autograph  draft of pages 213 to 217 of the vocal score of The Pilgrim's Progress by OUP (1952). The text differs from the final version,  the part for the Pilgrim still retaining some readings from The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains.