Ralph’s vision of peace

The list of works that have had their first performance at the Proms is both long and distinguished. Few, however, have enjoyed such lasting popularity as Vaughan Williams’s extraordinarily haunting Fifth Symphony. The work of a composer who, even at 70, was doing nightly duty as a firewatcher in the event of German air raids, its message seemed to many listeners to be one of a longed-for vision of peace. ‘Its serene loveliness is completely satisfying in these times,’ wrote conductor Adrian Boult to the composer, ‘and shows, as only music can, what we must work for when this madness is over.’