It is doubtful whether without the title and descriptive programme a hearer, as the music was playing, would say, “Aha! London—I hear the Thames, the roar and bustle of the streets. Now we are in foggy, dismal Bloomsbury. Let’s go to the Thames Embankment. And now we see the march of the unemployed.” No. The austere, remote Delius wrote a symphonic poem Paris, which is anything but the Paris of Louise, and might be Rouen, Belfast, or Terre Haute.
A critic in London reproached Williams for introducing in this symphony a theme too much like the notes of “Have a banana!” from a song. “We’ll All Go Down the Strand,” a popular music-hall ditty in the London of 1897. Perhaps Williams did this deliberately for the sake of “local color.”
The symphony contains pages of great worth. The first two movements are the richest in musical thought and in powerful expression. The idea of sleeping London is admirably brought out, and the contrast with London awake is symphonically, not merely theatrically, dramatic. The second movement is an excellent example of tonal painting. It seems to us that the succeeding movements lack varied and contrasting coloring. The “Hunger March” of the unemployed is disappointing. The subject called for a Hector Berlioz. The epilogue is of a higher flight of imagination. On the whole, the symphony is an important contribution to orchestral literature, one of the most important—and they have not been many—in a dozen years.
This symphony was composed in 1912-13. The first performance was at one of F. B. Ellis’s concerts in Queen’s Hall, London, on March 27, 1914. Geoffrey Toye was the conductor. On May 4, 1920, the revised version of the symphony was brought out at Queen’s Hall, London, at a concert of the British Music Society. Albert Coates conducted. This performance was said to be the fourth. It was also said that the symphony had been “shortened a good deal, particularly at the closes of the movements, on the way.”
The following description by Mr. Coates of the symphony was published in the bulletin of the society:
“The first movement opens at daybreak by the river. Old Father Thames flows calm and silent under the heavy gray dawn, deep and thoughtful, shrouded in mystery. London sleeps, and in the hushed stillness of early morning one hears Big Ben (the Westminster chimes) solemnly strike the half-hour.
“Suddenly the scene changes (allegro); one is on the Strand in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of morning traffic. This is London street life of the early hours—a steady stream of foot passengers hurrying, newspaper boys shouting, messengers whistling, and that most typical sight of London streets, the costermonger (Coster ’Arry), resplendent in pearl buttons, and shouting some coster song refrain at the top of a raucous voice, returning from Covent Garden Market, seated on his vegetable barrow drawn by the inevitable little donkey.
“Then for a few moments one turns off the Strand into one of the quiet little streets that lead down to the river and suddenly the noise ceases, shut off as though by magic. We are in the part of London known as the Adelphi. Formerly the haunt of fashionable bucks and dandies about town, now merely old-fashioned houses and shabby old streets, haunted principally by beggars and ragged street urchins.
“We return to the Strand and are once again caught up by the bustle and life of London—gay, careless, noisy, with every now and then a touch of something fiercer, something inexorable—as though one felt for a moment the iron hand of the great city—yet, nevertheless, full of that mixture of good-humor, animal spirits, and sentimentality that is so characteristic of London.