Symphony No. 8 (Vaughan Williams) Symphony No. 8 (Vaughan Williams) Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 8 in D minor was composed between 1953 and 1955. It was the first of his symphonies which Vaughan Williams numbered. Sir John Barbirolli conducted the premiere of the piece on 2 May 1956, with the Hallé Orchestra. The Eighth Symphony is the shortest of Vaughan Williams' nine symphonies, with a typical performance taking just under a half hour, yet it is remarkably inventive, especially in the composer's experiments in sonority. Not only does he use a much-expanded percussion section, including "all the 'phones and 'spiels known to the composer"
Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) His student, the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, claimed that he had borrowed the opening theme of the first movement from her "Sinfonietta for Small Orchestra in D minor" (1935), and that she in turn borrowed it back for her opera "The Transposed Heads" (1953). Glanville-Hicks did not complete her "Sinfonietta" until three months after the premiere of Vaughan Williams's symphony, but she was writing it at the same time as the composition of the symphony. Symphony No. 4 (Vaughan Williams) The Symphony No. 4 in F minor by Ralph Vaughan Williams was dedicated by the composer to Arnold Bax. Unlike