Ralph Vaughan Williams's third symphony, published as A Pastoral Symphony and not formally numbered until later, was completed in 1922. Vaughan Williams's inspiration to write this symphony came during his military service during the First World War after hearing a bugler practising: this ultimately led to the trumpet cadenza in the second movement.

The work has gained the reputation of being a subtly beautiful elegy for the dead of the World War and a meditation on the sounds of peace. Like many of the composer's works, the Pastoral Symphony is not programmatic, but its spirit is evocative. In the last of the four movements a wordless voice (usually soprano, but the score allows for a tenor alternative) joins the orchestral forces.

Background and premiere

Before the outbreak of the First World War Vaughan Williams had composed two symphonies: the first, A Sea Symphony (premiered in 1910), a large-scale four-movement work for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra; and the second, A London Symphony (1914), a purely orchestra work.Ottaway, Hugh, and Alain Frogley. "Vaughan Williams, Ralph", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001

On the outbreak of war, Vaughan Williams, despite his age – he was approaching forty-two – volunteered for military service. Joining the Royal Army Medical Corps as a private, he served as a stretcher bearer in an ambulance crew in France and later in Greece.Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 12 In 1917 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, seeing action in France from March 1918.Frogley, Alain. "Williams, Ralph Vaughan (1872–1958)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2015 The war left its emotional mark on Vaughan Williams, who lost many comrades and friends, including the young composer George Butterworth.Frogley, p. 99

The symphony began to take shape in the composer's mind while he was stationed in France. He wrote, long afterwards, "It's really war-time music – a great deal of it incubated when I used to go up night after night with the ambulance waggon … and we went up a steep hill and there was a wonderful Corot-like landscape in the sunset – it's not really lambkins frisking at all as most people take for granted". An army bugler used to practise, and his sound "became part of that evening landscape and is the genesis of the long trumpet cadenza in the second movement of the symphony – [the distant airs of a melancholy and tender song]".Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 121

The symphony was first performed in the Queen's Hall, London on 26 January 1922. Adrian Boult conducted the orchestra of the Royal Philharmonic Society;Vaughan Williams (1964), p. 140 the soprano soloist was Flora Mann. The first American performance of the work took place on 7 June 1922. The composer conducted the orchestra of the Litchfield County Music Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut, during his first visit to the United States.Vaughan Williams (1964), pp. 142–143 The soprano soloist was Florence Hinkle."R. Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony Wins Musical World", Hartford Courant, 8 June 1922, pp. 1–2

Structure

The symphony has four movements:

None of the four movements are particularly fast or upbeat (the composer himself described the symphony as "four movements, all of them slow"),Kennedy, p. 156 but there are isolated extroverted sections. A typical performance of the symphony lasts about 35 minutes.

In a note for the first performance Vaughan Williams wrote, "The mood of this Symphony is, as its title suggests, almost entirely quiet and contemplative – there are few fortissimos and few allegros. The only really quick passage is the coda to the third movement, and that is all pianissimo. In form it follows fairly closely the classical pattern, and is in four movements."

I. Molto moderato The time signature shifts throughout the movement between and .Vaughan Williams (1924), pp. 3–32

II. Lento moderato Moderato maestoso – the slow movement opens with an F major natural-horn solo above an F minor chord, a theme that is developed by a solo cello.Vaughan Williams (1924), pp. 33–37 The time signature shifts between and (with a few bars in ).Vaughan Williams (1924), pp. 33–49

Just as in the first movement, the ideas flow gently from one to the next, ultimately leading to the trumpet cadenza. Here, the instrument is in effect a natural trumpet (a trumpet without valves) in E, since the player is instructed not to use the valves. As a result, the seventh harmonic is played instead of the ordinary minor seventh, and so it sounds slightly out-of-tune with its nearest equivalent in 12-tone equal temperament.

The entire cadenza is played over a pedal note in the strings.Vaughan Williams (1924), p. 42 The cadenza material later reappears on the natural horn in F, gently accompanied by a returning theme now played on the cor anglais.Howells, p. 128. The movement ends with a quiet chord in the violins' high register. III. Moderato pesante Vaughan Williams described this movement, the symphony's scherzo, as a "slow dance".Stewart, Michael. "Vaughan Williams Symphonies", Gramophone, November 1992 The time signature shifts between , and .Vaughan Williams (1924), pp. 50–72

The trio, introduced by the brass section, with a theme of folk contour, stated by the trumpet, offering a contrast.Anderson, Keith. Notes to Naxos CD 8.550733

After the shortened return of the main material there is a coda with some fugal writing. This is the only time truly fast music appears in the symphony. A theme from the main section of the movement creeps into this fugue. The movement ends in a major chord.Vaughan Williams (1924), p. 83 IV. Lento The final movement is mostly in , with a few bars in and .Vaughan Williams (1924), pp. 84–105 It returns to the contemplative manner of the first two movements, and functions as a summing-up and coda to the rest of the symphony.Howells, p. 130. It begins with a pentatonic passage for a wordless voice (silent until this point), sung over a soft drumroll.Vaughan Williams (1924), p. 84 In the published score Vaughan Williams specifies a soprano or tenor voice for the vocal line, but provides a solo version for the first clarinet to be used for performances where there is no singer. The theme is marked ""– without bar-lines – which Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians defines as "freely", "without strict regard for the metre"."Misura", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 22 August 2019.

The orchestra then begins an elegiac rhapsody. The solo reappears, now accompanied only by sustained notes from the muted violins. Voice, clarinets and violins bring the symphony to a end.Vaughan Williams (1924), p. 105

Instrumentation The symphony is scored for a large orchestra including: 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets (in B and A; 3rd doubling on bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in C, 1 doubling on natural trumpet in E), 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, celesta, harp, and strings, plus a wordless solo voice in the 4th movement.

Reception From its first performance the symphony caused widely divergent reactions. H. C. Colles, music critic of The Times, found it a great advance on its predecessors: "There is nothing in the Pastoral Symphony but music. He is not concerned to find 'a way of speaking about life' which shall satisfy anyone else even for a moment. ... He is just living his own life simply, unaffectedly". Bruce Richmond said the work made him fall in love with music all over again.

Peter Warlock's often-quoted comment that "it is all just a little too much like a cow looking over a gate" was in fact a comment on Vaughan Williams's style in general, and was not aimed specifically at the Pastoral Symphony, which he described as "a truly splendid work" and "the best English orchestral music of this century".Smith, pp. 115 and 258 Constant Lambert wrote that that in this work, "the creation of a particular type of grey, reflective, English-landscape mood has outweighed the exigencies of symphonic form",Lambert, p. 134 but he ranked the work as "one of the landmarks in modern music".Matthew-Walker, Robert (2020). Notes to Hyperion CD 00602458140064 Hugh Allen said (affectionately, according to Kennedy) that it "suggested V.W. rolling over and over in a ploughed field on a wet day".Kennedy, pp. 164–165 Other composers valued the symphony highly, among them Herbert Howells, Cecil Sharp and Gustav Holst, who preferred it to any of Vaughan Williams's other orchestral works: "the very essence of you. Which is one of the two reasons (the other being that it is a beautiful work of art) why it is such an important event in my life".

In a chapter of Robert Simpson's symposium on symphonies, David Cox writes of the Pastoral that it was quite unlike any other symphony that had ever appeared before:

Cox adds that the work "is the expression of moods, not scene-painting" and that there are no babbling brooks or rustles of spring. In his analysis the still, remote music represented "an impersonal union with nature, which finds perfect lyrical expression in the wordless vocal solo of the last movement"

In 2020 the composer and musical analyist Robert Matthew-Walker wrote, "The Pastoral is the least-often played of Vaughan Williams's earlier symphonies, yet it remains, after a century, one of his strongest, most powerful and most personal utterances, fully bearing out Lambert’s earlier estimation.

Recordings Conductor Orchestra Soloist YearRefSir Adrian BoultLondon PhilharmonicMargaret Ritchie1953Decca (LP) LXT 2787Sir Adrian BoultBBC SymphonyValerie Hill1966BBC Radio Classics (LP) 15656 91642Sir Adrian BoultNew PhilharmoniaMargaret Price1968HMV (LP) ASD 2393André PrevinLondon SymphonyHeather Harper1971RCA (LP) SB 6861Bryden ThomsonLondon SymphonyYvonne Kenny1987Chandos (CD) CHAN 8594MGennady RozhdestvenskyUSSR Ministry of Culture SymphonyYelena Dof-Donskaya1988Melodiya (LP) 2170Vernon HandleyRoyal Liverpool PhilharmonicAlison Barlow1991EMI Eminence (CD) CD-EMX 2192Leonard SlatkinPhilharmoniaLinda Hohenfeld1991RCA (CD) 09026 61194-2Kees BakelsBournemouth SymphonyPatricia Rozario1992Naxos (CD) 8.550733Andrew DavisBBC SymphonyPatricia Rozario1996Teldec (CD) 0630-13139-2Bernard HaitinkLondon PhilharmonicAmanda Roocroft1996EMI (CD) 5 56564 2Roger NorringtonLondon PhilharmonicRosa Mannion1997Decca (CD) 458 357-2Richard HickoxLondon SymphonyRebecca Evans2002Chandos (CD) CHAN 10001Sir Mark ElderHalléSarah Fox2013Hallé (CD) CDHLL7540Andrew ManzeRoyal Liverpool PhilharmonicAndrew Staples2016Onyx (CD) ONYX 4161Martyn BrabbinsBBC SymphonyElizabeth Watts2020Hyperion (CD) CDA68280

Notes, references and sources Notes

References

Sources

Further reading Blom, Eric (December 1931). "Vaughan Williams - Pastoral Symphony." The Music Teacher, vol. 10, no. 12, pp. 666, 674. Grimley, Daniel M. (2010). "Landscape and Distance: Vaughan Williams, Modernism and the Symphonic Pastoral." In Matthew Riley, ed., British Music and Modernism, 1895-1960 (Ashgate, 2010), pp. 147–174. Manning, David (June 2006). "Listening to the 'Pastoral Symphony.'" Journal of the RVW Society, no. 36, pp. 3–5. Ottaway, D. Hugh (November 1949). "Vaughan Williams and the Pastoral Symphony." The Musical Times, vol. 90, no. 1281, p. 404. Ottaway, D. Hugh (December 1951). "Vaughan Williams' 'Pastoral Symphony.'" Hallé Magazine, no. 43, pp. 4–7. Shaw-Miller, Simon. (2010). "Palmer and the dark pastoral in English music of the twentieth century." In Simon Shaw-Miller & Sam Smiles, eds., Samuel Palmer Revisited (Ashgate, 2010), pp. 125–152. Vaillancourt, Michael (1991). "Modal and Thematic Coherence in Vaughan Williams's 'Pastoral Symphony.'" The Music Review, vol. 52, pp. 203–217.

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