Happy birthday, Ralph Vaughan Williams, one of my favorite composers!

Thank you so much for the “Serenade to Music,” “The Lark Ascending,” the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” “Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus,” “The Wasps,” the “Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1,” the “English Folk Song Suite,” the “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” “Five Mystical Songs,” the “Charterhouse Suite,” the “Concerto Grosso,” the “Old King Cole” ballet, “Household Music,” “Hugh the Drover,” “Sir John in Love,” and too many others to enumerate.

Of your nine symphonies, I certainly have my preferences. Each of them holds its own particular delight – even the ones that are served up harsh or leave us hanging, with big questions about their, and our, ultimate destinations. Collectively, they form a surprisingly disparate body of work, belying your reputation as a pastoralist.

That said, if I want to find solace or to be uplifted, I always gravitate to the Fifth.

For me, the facts surrounding the Fifth’s creation make it all the more moving. It’s frequently been remarked upon that the symphony shares a certain kinship with your opera, “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” which you worked at for decades and still remained incomplete.

At first, when you heard the symphony played by friends in its two-piano reduction, you had doubts as to its value. That’s a little ironic for a work that is so imbued with the power of faith. And by faith, I don’t mean religion. It’s well-known to most that in your maturity you embraced what you described as a “cheerful agnosticism” (downgraded from earlier assertions of atheism). When it was finally performed by an orchestra, you realized your reservations were unfounded.

You dedicated the work to Jean Sibelius, “without permission.” However, when Sibelius heard the piece, he too was delighted. He wrote to Adrian Boult, “This symphony is a marvelous work… the dedication made me feel proud and grateful… I wonder if Dr. Williams has any idea of the pleasure he has given me?”

The symphony was introduced in June of 1943, at the height of the blitz. German bombs rained down on London after dark, so the concert had to be held in the afternoon. We can only imagine what that must have been like – the nightly danger, the disruption of conveniences, the loss of life, the injuries, the rationing, the rubble, the noise, the fear – and then the power of this music, music of fortitude and optimism, and what affect it must have had on its first audiences. Here was assurance that everything was going to be all right. This too would pass. Beyond the bombs, beyond Hitler, England would endure, as would other things. Larger things. Immutable things.

Who knew that you, the cheerful agnostic, would turn out to be a prophet?

Here you are conducting, at the age of 80, your Symphony No. 5.