MS Mus. 1752/1/1

1. ff. 1-9. "Nocturne: Whispers of heavenly death" for medium voice and orchestra. Words by Walt Whitman. Composed in January 1908, and presumably intended to form a set with two other Whitman settings composed in August that year ("Come, O voluptuous sweet-breathed earth" and "Out of the Rolling Ocean", see Add MS 57283). First performed at Gloucester Three Choirs Festival in 2001 by the mezzo-soprano Pamela Helen Stephen, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Richard Hickox. First published by Faber Music in 2013. Autograph score in ink with pencil and blue crayon annotations and corrections. Dated at the end, "Jan 11th 1908". Five bifolia, 20-stave paper. With a letter (f. 11) dated 2001 from M Hermione Oliver, Secretary to Ursula Vaughan Williams, concerning the identification of the manuscript.

2. ff. 12-14. A harmonised chant for Psalm 67, Deus misereatur ("God be merciful unto us and bless us"); 1945. Composed for St Martin's Church, Dorking. Autograph score in ink on a single sheet of 12-stave paper, with the chant in close score followed by "suggestions for pointing". Signed at top right, "R Vaughan Williams for William Cole"; undated. Accompanied by a manuscript copy of a chant by Sir Ivor Atkins and a letter to William Cole from Christopher Robinson of St John's College, Cambridge, beginning "I enclose the chant which R.V-W's resembles so strongly..."

3. f. 15. Symphony no. 7 (Sinfonia antartica), composed between 1949 and 1952, first performed in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 14 January 1953, by the Hallé Orchestra, Margaret Ritchie (soprano), the women of the Hallé Choir and Sir John Barbirolli. The first leaf of the draft short score, on 12-stave paper, in ink with ink and pencil corrections. Signature and title at the top of the page, "R Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antarctico". The following movement title, "I Prelude" and epigraph beginning "To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite..." are in the hand of Ursula Vaughan Williams.