Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams)

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his Symphony No. 4 between 1931 and 1935. Unlike his first three symphonies, it was not given a title: the composer said that it was to be understood as pure music, without any incidental or external inspiration. In contrast to many of Vaughan Williams's previous compositions, the symphony displays a severity of tone. It is in four movements, scored for a large orchestra.

The first performance was given at the Queen's Hall, London, on 10 April 1935; Adrian Boult conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. There have been many recordings of the symphony, beginning with one made two years after the premiere featuring the BBC orchestra conducted by the composer.

Background Towards the end of 1931 Vaughan Williams began work on a new symphony. His first (A Sea Symphony, 1910) had been for chorus and orchestra; his second (A London Symphony (1914) was purely orchestral; and his third (Pastoral Symphony, 1922) was for orchestra with solo singer. His widow, Ursula, wrote in her biography of him that the impetus to write a fourth came from an article in The Times.Vaughan Williams (1965), p. 190 In August 1931 the paper carried a retrospect of the previous week’s festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music by its music critic, H. C. Colles. He wrote of modern symphonies by composers offering abstract music as a reaction against programme music:

Colles added that possibly "the only thing to do is to make good music on an old principle". On reading the article, Vaughan Williams said, "" (I need to compose this). His three earlier symphonies had to a greater or lesser extent contained programmatic elements. For the fourth, the composer forwent any such content. Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote that he was "experimenting with purely musical ideas; no sea or city, no essence of the country was at the heart of this score". And she and the composer's biographer Michael Kennedy have both said that the symphony contains an element of self-portraiture: "Many of RVW’s friends recognised in it his outbursts of temper and his gusty humour and ribaldry".Kennedy (2002), pp. 5–6

Whilst Vaughan Williams was working on the symphony, his closest friend, Gustav Holst, died. Vaughan Williams had continually had support and advice from him whilst working on previous compositions and, in Ursula's words, "he felt the loss of that loving and critical mind more deeply than ever" whilst completing the new work.Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 205 Support came from the composer Arnold Bax (dedicatee of the symphony), the teacher and composer R. O. Morris and the conductor Adrian Boult.

Premiere and reception Boult conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first performance, given at the Queen's Hall on 10 April 1935 and broadcast live by the BBC."Broadcasting", The Times, 10 April 1935, p. 12 The work was enthusiastically received: the music critic Richard Capell reported:

Two of Vaughan Williams's younger colleagues, William Walton and Constant Lambert, are reported as calling the work "the greatest symphony since Beethoven".Lloyd, p. 119 (Walton); and Heffer, p. 84 (Lambert) The London music critics were divided about the stature of the work. Neville Cardus commented that although Vaughan Williams had once been "one of our purest melodists, drawing his simple accents from English folk-tunes", he was now the opposite. "His new symphony, played superbly to-night by the BBC Orchestra under Dr Boult, has many admirable orchestral qualities, but a man might as well hang himself as look in the work for a great tune or theme". For Cardus, the symphony was the composer's most concentrated work but lacked the humanity of the London Symphony.Cardus, Neville. "The New Vaughan Williams Symphony", The Manchester Guardian, 11 April 1935, p. 6

In The Times Colles said that the symphony "begins with excited harmonic gestures from which presently a great variety of tunes emerge" He called the slow movement "a lovely texture of wandering counterpoints" and said that the scherzo is "easily enjoyed by all and sundry at a first hearing, because it has humour which is sensitive in the opening theme and becomes broad when the tuba begins to caper in the Trio"."BBC Orchestra: Vaughan Williams's New Symphony", The Times, 11 April 1935, p. 12 For Capell the work as a whole "is probably not Vaughan Williams at his greatest, for it does not represent his contemplative depths. But it is one of his most vivid compositions, and the intentions are carried out with the point and strength of a master-hand". The anonymous reviewer in The Musical Times wrote:

During rehearsals, the composer himself said of the work: "I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant".Ottaway, pp. 29–30 He later wrote to a friend, "I am not at all sure that I like it myself now. All I know is that it is what I wanted to do at the time".Kennedy, p. 247 He disclaimed attempts to interpret his music as a gloss on world events. The Fourth Symphony was being written whilst the Nazis were rising to power in Germany, and commentators including Hubert Foss and Frank Howes suggested that in Vaughan Williams's work "the prophet sees the nature of naked violence triumphant in Europe", in Howes's words.Foss, pp. 137–138; and Howes, p. 3 Boult wrote that the symphony "brought many of us straight up against the spectacle of war, and the ghastly possibility of it. A prophet, like other great men, he foresaw the whole thing ... and surely there is no more magnificent gesture of disgust in all music than that final open fifth when the composer seems to rid himself of the whole hideous idea.Boult, Adrian. "Tributes to Vaughan Williams", The Musical Times, vol. 99, no. 1388, 1958, pp. 536 The composer would have none of this; he told a friend, "I wrote it not as a definite picture of anything external – e.g. the state of Europe – but simply because it occurred to me like this – I can't explain why". He later told the critic Olin Downes:

Structure The work is in four movements with the third and fourth linked:

A typical performance takes about 32 minutes.

Opening dissonance of the first movement:

Germinal motive that develops out of the opening dissonance:

Motive built of fourths (measure 14–15):

Instrumentation The symphony is scored for a large orchestra including: 2 or 3 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo), 2 or 3 oboes (2nd doubling on cor anglais), 2 clarinets (in B), bass clarinet (in B) (ad lib.), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon (ad lib.), 4 horns (in F), 2 trumpets (in C), 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (timpani, triangle, side drum, cymbals, bass drum), and strings.

Later performances, publication and manuscript The American premiere was given on 19 December 1935 by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński. The German premiere was on 8 January 1936 in Munich, conducted by Boult. The Australian premiere was in Sydney on 6 July 1937, conducted by Malcolm Sargent. The symphony was not performed in Canada until 2013; Bramwell Tovey conducted.Kaptainis, Arthur. "Classical Music Review", Montreal Gazette, 12 March 2013

The Oxford University Press published the score in 1935. A grant from the Vaughan Williams Trust enabled the Department of Manuscripts of what is now the British Library to purchase the autograph full score of the symphony in 1960. The only autograph manuscript music by Vaughan Williams hitherto preserved in the department's own collections was the Concerto Accademico for violin and string orchestra of 1925, although the department also held the autograph full score of the Sinfonia Antartica on indefinite loan from the Royal Philharmonic Society. The manuscript of the F minor symphony contains several passages later discarded and numerous corrections by the composer.Willetts, Pamela J. "Vaughan Williams's Symphony in F Minor", The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (September 1960), p. 6

Recordings The first recording, made two years after the premiere, featured the composer himself conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in what proved to be his only commercial recording of any of his symphonies. It was released on 78-rpm discs in the UK by His Master's Voice and in the US by RCA Victor, and has been reissued on LP and CD. In his 1972 study of Vaughan Williams's symphonies, Hugh Ottaway wrote that "for sheer ferocity" the composer's own recording remained unsurpassed.Ottaway, p. 31

ConductorOrchestraYearRefRalph Vaughan WilliamsBBC Symphony1937His Master's Voice Red Seal 78s DB 3367–3370 (Abbey Road, 11 October 1937)Sir Adrian BoultNBC Symphony1938Pristine Classical PASC 626 (Studio 8-H, 21 May 1938)Leopold StokowskiNBC Symphony1943Cala Records CACD 0528 (14 March 1943)Sir John BarbirolliBBC Symphony1950Barbirolli Society SJB 1064 (1950)Dimitri MitropoulosNew York Philharmonic1953Music & Arts CD 1214 (Carnegie Hall, 5 April 1953)Sir Adrian BoultLondon Philharmonic1953Decca LXT 2909 (Kingsway Hall, 2–4 December 1953)Dimitri MitropoulosNew York Philharmonic1956Columbia Masterworks ML 5158 (Columbia 30th Street Studios, 9 January 1956)Sir Malcolm SargentBBC Symphony1963Carlton BBC Radio Classics 15656 91312 (Royal Albert Hall, 16 August 1963)Leonard BernsteinNew York Philharmonic1965Columbia MS 7177 (Philharmonic Hall, 21 October 1965)Sir Adrian BoultNew Philharmonia1968His Master's Voice ASD 2375 (Abbey Road, 22–23 Jan. and 12 February 1968)André PrevinLondon Symphony1969RCA Red Seal SB 6801 (Kingsway Hall, 10–11 March 1969)Norman Del MarBBC Scottish Symphony1973BBC Music Magazine MM 80 (BBC Studios, Glasgow, 24 August 1973)Colin DavisBoston Symphony1973BSO CB 100 (Symphony Hall, 26 October 1973)Paavo BerglundRoyal Philharmonic1979EMI ASD 3904 (Abbey Road, 29–30 October 1979)Bryden ThomsonLondon Symphony1987Chandos CHAN 8633 (St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, 27–28 November 1987)Gennady RozhdestvenskyUSSR State Symphony1988Melodiya CD 10-02170-3 (Philharmonia Building, Leningrad, 28 October 1988)Vernon HandleyRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic1991EMI Eminence CD EMX 2192 (Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 8–9 March 1991)Leonard SlatkinPhilharmonia1991RCA Victor Red Seal 09026-61194-2 (Watford Town Hall, 29 November 1991)Andrew DavisBBC Symphony1992Teldec 4509-90844-2 (St Augustine's Church, London, December 1992)Bernard HaitinkLondon Philharmonic1996EMI CD 5 56564 2 (Colosseum, Watford, December 1996)Roger NorringtonLondon Philharmonic1997Decca 458 658–2 (Colosseum, Watford, February 1997)Richard HickoxLondon Symphony2001Chandos CHAN 9984 (All Saints Church, Tooting, January 2001)Paul DanielBournemouth Symphony2003Naxos 8.557276 (Lighthouse, Poole, 6–7 March 2003)Leon BotsteinAmerican Symphony2006. ASO download 091 (Avery Fisher Hall, 7 April 2006)Sir Colin DavisLondon Symphony2008LSO Live 0766 (Barbican Hall, 24 September 2008)Peter OundjianToronto Symphony2011TSO Live 0311 (Thomson Hall, March 2011)Carlos KalmarOregon Symphony2011PentaTone PTC 5186 393 (Schnitzer Hall, Portland, 7–8 May 2011)Mark WigglesworthLondon Philharmonic2013LPO CD 0082 (Royal Festival Hall, 1 May 2013)Robert SpanoAtlanta Symphony2014ASO Media CD-1005 (Woodruff Center, Atlanta, 21–22 February 2014)Sir Mark ElderHallé2016Hallé CD HLL 7547 (Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 7 April 2016)Andrew ManzeRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic2016Onyx 4161 (Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 5–7 May 2016)Sir Antonio PappanoLondon Symphony2020LSO Live LSO0867D (Barbican Hall, London, 15 March 2020)

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Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams)

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