Symphony No. 6 in E Minor

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed this Symphony in 1944 – 47, during and immediately after World War II, revised it in 1950, and dedicated it to Michael Mullinar, his friend and former student. The Symphony, played continuously without a break, was first performed by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra on 21 April 1948. Williams incorporated elements of jazz in the Scherzo movement because of the deaths of band members in the Café de Paris bombing in 1941. The Symphony is noteworthy for its unusually discordant harmonic language of violence and bleakness, and inevitably, post-war audiences associated its disturbing tone with the detonation of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The symphony continues to provoke much speculation about its meaning, and the only clue from Vaughan Williams himself, as quoted by his widow, points us in the direction of the Nunc dimittis (also known as the Song of Simeon), taken from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verses 29 through 32: 

“Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, 
O Lord, according to   thy word in peace; 
Because my eyes have seen thy salvation, 
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples: 
A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, 
and the glory of thy people Israel.”

​Here are four albums:
 
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 6. Antonio Pappano and London Symphony Orchestra. Release Date: 16 Apr 2021. Label: LSO Live.
 
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 8. Martyn Brabbins with BBC Symphony Orchestra. Release Date: 7 Oct 2022. Label: Hyperion.
 
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 6. Sir Mark Elder and Halle. Release Date: 6 Oct 2017. Label: Halle.
 
Vaughan Williams: The Complete Symphonies. Bernard Haitink with Ian Bostridge (tenor), Sarah Chang (violin), and London Philharmonic Orchestra. Release Date: 5 Aug 2013. Label: Warner Classics.