Symphony No. 3

A Pastoral Symphony, the third of Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies, was completed in 1922, having matured for several years in the composer’s mind. He had joined the British Army at the start of the First World War, and in 1916 he was serving as an ambulance driver in northern France. He later said that much of the music of A Pastoral Symphony was “incubated” there, amid the beautiful landscape scenery behind the army front line. He never put on record the wartime horrors he witnessed. But the depth of the music’s loveliness and poignancy in A Pastoral Symphony suggests that this is equally a “Requiem Symphony”, whose true meaning Vaughan Williams preferred not to disclose directly, instead concealing it behind the work’s choice of title. All four of the symphony’s movements are predominantly slow; the “Presto” conclusion to the Scherzo-like third is the only passage of genuinely fast music. The wartime connection is clearest in the second movement, where between two statements of a quiet orchestral lament, a natural trumpet plays a solo cadenza, accompanied by a held chord on the strings—the composer’s memory of an army bugler practicing. The finale begins and ends with a long melody sung by a wordless soprano voice, whose phrases supply the material extended and developed by the orchestra at the heart of the movement.