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. 6 (Vaughan Williams) symphony marks the beginning of Vaughan Williams's experiments with orchestration that so characterise his late music. The symphony is in four linked movements (i.e. one movement leads straight into the next, with no pause between them), and includes a number of ideas that return in various guises throughout the symphony, for example the use of simultaneous chords a half-step apart, or the short-short-long rhythmic figure. <score vorbis="1"> { \new PianoStaff « \new Staff \relative c" { \clef treble \numericTimeSignature \time 4/4 \key e \minor \tempo "Allegro" 4 = 100 f8--\ff g-- aes4->(~ \times 2/3 { aes8 g e) } \times