Symphony No. 4 in F minor

The symphony opens at once with a fortissimo clash of a semitone. Two principal themes are drawn from it and recur throughout the work.

A four-note figure runs through much of the symphony. Vaughan Williams varies it many times.

Ursula Vaughan Williams traced the symphony to a newspaper paragraph in The Times that described an imagined symphony. Her husband reacted at breakfast with “il faut je compose cela”.

The two themes are treated in counterpoint virtually throughout the movement, within a compact structure.

The symphony was first played at Queen’s Hall on 10 April 1935 by the recently formed BBC Symphony Orchestra under Adrian Boult. Vaughan Williams dedicated it to Arnold Bax.

Vaughan Williams conducted this recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Studio 1 at Abbey Road on 11 October 1937. HMV issued the symphony on 78-rpm discs.

Vaughan Williams always denied that the symphony was a reaction to events in Europe. He could point to other recent works with passages of similar power and conflict, among them the oratorio Sancta civitas, the masque for dancing Job and the piano concerto.

Vaughan Williams rejected any reading of the symphony as a picture of events outside the music. He said he wrote it “simply because it occurred to me like this. I can’t explain why…”

The movement ends with a pianissimo coda in a soft major key. Robert Matthew-⁠Walker wrote that here the Pastoral Symphony’s layered harmony is put to a very different expressive use.