Symphony No. 9 in E Minor

Completed in 1957 and first performed a year later, Vaughan Williams’ Ninth and last Symphony searches deeper into the musical world first announced in his Sixth Symphony (also in E minor)—an idiom whose brooding, Shostakovich-like manner operates at an opposite pole from the composer’s more familiar “pastoralism.” The otherwise standard orchestral lineup additionally features a flügelhorn and three saxophones, presiding over the music’s generally dark sound world like the Three Fates of Greek mythology. And there is a connection with Thomas Hardy’s tragic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, set in the fictional English region of Wessex. Annotations in the symphony’s manuscript include “Wessex Prelude” above the first movement and “Stonehenge” in the second, whose beautiful central theme for strings is marked “Tess.” The published score omits these; Vaughan Williams said that the work “started off with a program, but it got lost on the journey, and the music must speak for itself.” The Symphony begins with the single note E; out of this emerges a powerful main theme, turbulently developed before finally referring back to the opening. The flügelhorn begins the second movement with a quiet opening solo, instantly confronted by a menacing, drum-like orchestral response; eventually the “Tess” idea appears and is passionately extended. After a caustically satirical “Scherzo” comes the long and somber finale (“Andante tranquillo”), leading to a remarkable ending, with the orchestra’s long-held E major chord dissonantly overlaid by the three saxophones.