Ralph Vaughan Williams became a kind of “Dean of English music” in his lifetime. He spearheaded a deep study and collection of English hymns and folk music, as well as the music of his forebears, among them the Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis (1505–1585) and the Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695). He also achieved fame in his lengthy career as England’s premier writer of symphonies, although he was often reluctant in the genre, with each of his nine symphonies taking years to write. Such it was with his Fifth Symphony. Vaughan Williams had just completed his highly dissonant Fourth Symphony (premiered in 1935) and began sketching ideas for his Fifth a year later in 1936.

The Symphony gestated slowly. In the meantime, Vaughan Williams was also deeply committed to writing his opera based on British author Paul Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), on which he had begun work in 1921. He began to fear that this opera would never be completed – and indeed it took him over 30 years to complete and premiere it in 1952. In the interim, he decided to incorporate some of the opera’s musical ideas and themes into his Fifth Symphony. As ideas were brewing for a few years on the Fifth, Britain then entered into World War II in 1939, and Vaughan Williams was even further delayed from completing his Symphony as he dutifully volunteered for many causes during the War. When he finally completed his Fifth in 1943, not only were the spiritual ideas from his opera infused into its fabric, but so, too, were his feelings of sadness about the War. The result was one of Vaughan Williams’s most gentle expressions – fermented in spiritual meditation, and in reaction, to the terrors that all of Europe faced in the War.

After its premiere in 1943, a review in the London newspaper, The Times, described the Fifth as a Symphony that:
“…belongs to that small body of music that, outside of late Beethoven, can properly be described as transcendental … this is music not only of contemplation but of benediction.”

The finished score of the Fifth first bore an important dedication: “Dedicated without permission, with the sincerest flattery, to Jean Sibelius, whose great example is worthy of imitation.” The later published version is simply dedicated to Sibelius (permission was eventually obtained, however, and with deep gratitude from Sibelius) – it appears that Vaughan Williams was initially hindered from asking due to wartime circumstances. But rather than any outright “imitations” to Sibelius’s music, it’s clear that Vaughan Williams’s Fifth was written in the sincerest homage to Sibelius, whose music Vaughan Williams was a great admirer.

The Preludio first movement is a uniquely fluid movement. It opens with the low strings bowing a long and low C, while overtop the two horns play a slowly rocking motive in D Major, creating a dissonance (a tritone) between the strings’ and the horns’ pitches (a dissonance that will wait until the very last bars of the Symphony’s finale to be resolved). The upper strings then answer with a simple rising, then falling, motive. From this point, the two motives branch out, become slightly more complex rhythmically and harmonically, and essentially grow in a kind of magical expansion of sound. The motives feel independent, yet intertwined, and spreading outwards – while the upper string’s rising-falling motive inhabit the winds, so do the horns’ simple rocking motive imbue the strings, and then the winds – and the fabric of sound becomes denser and more colorful. To keep the simplicity from growing tedious, Vaughan Williams continually shifts the key, ever reaching upwards, and occasionally speeds up the tempo and quickens the rhythms. The culmination of this kind of “vining” happens at about eight-and-a-half minutes, when the brass, and then the timpani, erupt into some of the most majestically spine-tingling music in any of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies. The movement then begins to gradually shift harmonically lower, and at last, to return to the opening motives, in quiet, and in a kind of harmonic stasis, until the last bar fades into soundlessness.

The next movement, Scherzo, is a celebration of delightful rhythmic chaos. Though the movement begins with the typical scherzo whirlwind of three quick notes to the beat, Vaughan Williams continually befuddles the beat. The three beats often collide with only two beats, and the length of the musical phrases often change, making it feel as though we are riding a fast-galloping horse – and it’s deliriously fun. The middle portion of the Scherzo hardly lets up on the excitement, but Vaughan Williams makes its theme sound antique, as though Thomas Tallis himself has joined us on the ride. This happens at about thirteen-and-a-half minutes into the movement, when, as the strings are whirling about underneath, the brass and the lower winds begin a tune cast in what sounds like a Medieval mode and out of rhythm from the rest of the orchestra. The Scherzo then recovers and quietly propels itself to its final bars.

One last influence on Vaughan Williams for this Symphony was his meeting of Ursula Wood in 1938, his soon-to-be wife, and that newfound love finds a reserved reflection in this Romanza. But inspiration also relies in part on his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress. In the unpublished score, Vaughan Williams inscribed this movement with a few lines from Bunyan:

“Upon that place there stood a cross and a little below a sepulchre … Then he said ‘He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death’”

When the score was officially published, however, these lines were omitted, as Vaughan Williams said he wanted the Symphony to stand without any kind of a program (or, storyline). But, after the strings open with several measures of beautiful, muted, and ethereal chords, the English horn enters with a ruminative solo that Vaughan Williams took directly from music he wrote for his opera. The movement then flows in a timeless and gorgeously meditative way. A particularly lovely moment, reflective of both inner contentment as well as bittersweet remembrances, occurs at about four minutes into the movement when the oboe and English horn have an extended duet. This Romanza is the emotional soul of the Symphony, evoking both newfound love, but also, a eulogy to those lost to the terrible war.

The finale, Passacaglia, is initially based on an old musical structure of the same name, known best in its Baroque-period form where a bass line is played repeatedly, and used as the structure for a set of variations upon it. And indeed, the basses begin the movement with a jaunty, rather happy-go-lucky theme, lasting seven measures and which repeats for some time. The musical variations thereafter take on an increasing air of joyousness, bubbling up in several mighty moments with brass and timpani. When, at about five-and-a-half minutes, the horns’ rocking motive from the first movement returns, now ablaze with grandeur, everything then begins to soften and become more tranquil, until the final, tender bars. As eloquently described by musicologist Michael Steinberg (1928–2009), the Symphony ends:

“…in peaceful meditation… the music arrives at its destination: a luminous D major close, hushed, beatific, with an ineffable sense of peace. Here, if anywhere in music, is transcendence.”

© Max Derrickson