Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his Symphony No. 5 in D major between 1938 and 1943. This composition marked a stylistic departure from the harsh dissonance of his Fourth Symphony and a return to the gentler style of his earlier Pastoral Symphony.
Many musical themes in the Fifth Symphony are derived from Vaughan Williams' then-unfinished opera, The Pilgrim's Progress. This work, which he preferred to call Morality, had been in development for decades and had been temporarily set aside at the time of the symphony's conception. Despite these origins, the symphony contains no programmatic content.
Many musical themes in the Fifth Symphony are taken from Vaughan Williams' then-unfinished opera, The Pilgrim's Progress. The first movement begins with a low C in the strings, while above them two horns play a slowly swaying motif in D major, creating a dissonance (a tritone) between the pitches of the strings and the horns—a dissonance that is not resolved until the final bars of the symphony's finale. The upper strings then respond with a simple ascending, then descending motif. From this point on, the two motifs branch out, becoming rhythmically and harmonically somewhat more complex, and unfold in a kind of magical sonic flourish.
The symphony was an immediate success at its premiere in 1943 and is frequently performed in concerts and on recordings. Compared to his other works, it requires the smallest ensemble of all his symphonies.
The Passacaglia finale is characterized by a unique structure. About seven minutes before the movement's end, Vaughan Williams abandons the passacaglia. We experience an imitative section on the passacaglia theme, which leads back to the fanfare. The fanfare merges with the passacaglia and the countermelody, reaching a climax that quickly subsides into an agitated version of the passacaglia on the clarinet and other wind instruments.
This work, composed during a period when Vaughan Williams was temporarily suffering from writer's block, clearly demonstrates his ability to harmonically integrate themes from 'The Pilgrim's Progress' into a symphony that dispenses with programmatic content.