This opera, or "morality" as Vaughan Williams preferred to call it, had been in gestation for decades, and the composer had temporarily abandoned it at the time the symphony was conceived.
The musicologist J. P. E. Harper-Scott has called Sibelius "the influence of choice" among British symphonists in the years between the two World Wars, citing Walton's First Symphony, all seven of Bax's and the first five of Havergal Brian.
[9] Sir Adrian Boult subsequently secured permission, corresponding with Sibelius through an intermediary (Kurt Atterberg) in a neutral country (Sweden).
[9] After listening to a broadcast of the work, Sibelius wrote to Atterberg, "I heard Dr. Ralph Vaughan Williams' new Symphony from Stockholm under the excellent leadership of Malcolm Sargent ...
[9] Similarities in orchestration are evident, such as the atmospheric string writing midway through the first movement of the Vaughan Williams work, noted in the following section.
[9] The symphony is scored for two flutes (one doubling piccolo), oboe, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons, two French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
The first movement, in Frank Howes's analysis (1954), can be seen either as "an elaborate ternary form with coda" or "an exposition of two big groups of themes succeeded without development by a condensed recapitulation".
The movement opens with a pedal C in the bass, answered by a horn call outlining a D major chord in a dotted rhythm, which implies mixolydian D. The violins use the notes of the pentatonic scale, making the key ambiguous.
[20] The horn call motif fluctuates from major to minor, outlining the tonal ambiguity, moving between the mixolydian and dorian modes, which becomes a characteristic of the movement.
The bass, now played pizzicato, supports the melody both melodically and harmonically and the texture incorporates suspensions and passing notes, making the harmony richer.
A sudden descent of a semitone, an idea previously used in Vaughan Williams's works Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Job, marks a key change to three flats and also the development section.
[24] Arnold Whittall argues that "With respect to D Major, the Preludio might be regarded as a clear case of Schoenbergian 'Schwebende Tonalität' ('fluctuating: suspended, not yet decided' tonality)",[25] although Vaughan Williams stated that Schoenberg's music meant nothing to him.
[28] In the manuscript score Vaughan Williams headed this movement with words taken from Bunyan: Upon that place there stood a cross And a little below a sepulchre … Then he said "He hath given me rest by his sorrow and Life by his death"[29][30] The third and fourth lines were later sung in the opera by Pilgrim.
[33] Howes comments that with its spiritual, meditative nature there is nothing "romantic" about this movement;[34] Michael Kennedy observes that with Vaughan Williams the term "is always a signal that the music was of special significance to him".
Although this movement begins with the repetitive bass line characteristic of the passacaglia form, Vaughan Williams eventually abandons it.
Sir Henry Wood, the founder and presiding figure of the Proms, was originally intended to conduct the performance but was not well enough and the composer was persuaded to take the baton.
A grudging note was struck by William Glock, a proponent of avant-garde music, who commented in The Observer that the symphony was "like the work of a distinguished poet who has nothing very new to say, but says it in exquisitely flowing language".
"[42] When the first recording came out in 1944 (see below) The Observer was more welcoming than Glock had been the year before, saying that the Fifth was to the Fourth Symphony as The Tempest is to King Lear … ideal beauty.