A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2)

• Vaughan Williams’s second symphony is purely orchestral, unlike his first, A Sea Symphony. A London Symphony was completed in 1913 and premiered in London in 1914. The composer wrote that he preferred the work to be referred to as “Symphony by a Londoner.”
• Vaughan Williams made significant revisions to the piece in the following years, perhaps because the premiere was received as too long. He finally published the symphony for the first time in 1920. The final revision of A London Symphony was published in 1936.
  • Vaughan Williams dedicated the 1920 version to George Butterworth, a friend and fellow composer who had been killed on active service during World War I.
  • Fun fact – the composer’s initial concept for the work was a symphonic poem about London. Butterworth is said to have suggested to Vaughan Williams that the material would work best as a symphony.¹
• The symphony is seemingly filled with references to London, such as the Westminster chimes; however, the composer asserted that the work is not meant to be programmatic but rather absolute (meaning the music has no direct literary, dramatic, or pictorial reference; “music for music’s sake”). Vaughan Williams did not intend to tell a particular story of London with this symphony.²
• Shortly before his death, Vaughan Williams noted to his biographer that the epilogue (or coda) of the fourth movement of A London Symphony was linked to the end of the novel, Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells:

Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom. Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass–pass. The river passes–London passes, England passes…³

1. William Mann, Essay in accompanying booklet, Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony / Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, EMI 64017, 1991, compact disc.
2. Hugh Ottaway and Alain Frogley, “Vaughan Williams, Ralph,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 29, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000042507.
3. Anthony Arblaster, “‘A London Symphony’ and ‘Tono-Bungay,’” Tempo, no. 163 (1987): 21–25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/945688.