Editing Ralph Vaughan Williams (section)

====Symphonies 4–6 (1935–1948)====
The middle three symphonies are purely orchestral, and generally conventional in form, with [[sonata form]] (modified in places), specified [[Tonic (music)|home keys]], and four-movement structure.<ref>Schwartz, pp. 75, 78, 80, 84, 90, 93, 97, 100, 106, 110, 114 and 117</ref> The orchestral forces required are not large by the standards of the first half of the 20th century, although the Fourth calls for an augmented woodwind section and the Sixth includes a part for [[tenor saxophone]].<ref>[http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.4_in_F_minor_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph) "Symphony No.4 in F minor (Vaughan Williams, Ralph)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151024222532/http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.4_in_F_minor_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph) |date=24 October 2015 }}; and [http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.6_in_E_minor_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph) "Symphony No.6 in E minor (Vaughan Williams, Ralph)"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151005201143/http://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.6_in_E_minor_(Vaughan_Williams,_Ralph) |date=5 October 2015 }}, International Music Score Library Project, retrieved 11 October 2015</ref> The [[Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams)|Fourth Symphony]] (1935) astonished listeners with its striking dissonance, far removed from the prevailing quiet tone of the previous symphony.<ref>Schwartz, p. 88</ref> The composer firmly contradicted any notions that the work was programmatical in any respect, and Kennedy calls attempts to give the work "a meretricious programme&nbsp;... a poor compliment to its musical vitality and self-sufficiency".<ref>Kennedy (1980), p. 268</ref>

The [[Symphony No. 5 (Vaughan Williams)|Fifth Symphony]] (1943) was in complete contrast to its predecessor. Vaughan Williams had been working on and off for many years on his operatic version of Bunyan's ''The Pilgrim's Progress''. Fearing—wrongly as it turned out—that the opera would never be completed, Vaughan Williams reworked some of the music already written for it into a new symphony. Despite the internal tensions caused by the deliberate conflict of modality in places, the work is generally serene in character, and was particularly well received for the comfort it gave at a time of all-out war.<ref>Cox, pp. 122–123; and Schwartz. p. 104</ref> [[Neville Cardus]] later wrote, "The Fifth Symphony contains the most benedictory and consoling music of our time."<ref>Cardus, Neville, "The Measure of Vaughan Williams", ''[[Saturday Review (U.S. magazine)|The Saturday Review]]'', 31 July 1954, p. 45</ref>

With the [[Symphony No. 6 (Vaughan Williams)|Sixth Symphony]] (1948) Vaughan Williams once again confounded expectations. Many had seen the Fifth, composed when he was seventy, as a valedictory work, and the turbulent, troubled Sixth came as a shock. After violent orchestral clashes in the first movement, the obsessive ''[[ostinato]]'' of the second and the "diabolic" scherzo, the finale perplexed many listeners. Described as "one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken in music",<ref>Cox, p. 111</ref> it is marked ''pianissimo'' throughout its 10–12-minute duration.{{refn|In 1956 the composer said in a letter to Michael Kennedy that the nearest that words could get to what he intended in the finale were Prospero's in ''[[The Tempest]]'': "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."<ref name=k302/>|group= n}}