Standards Michigan Central
This is his RVW’s first completed symphony and one of the earliest major choral symphonies in English music. Setting poetry from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, it explores the sea as both a literal and spiritual metaphor for exploration and human destiny. Premiered at the Leeds Festival, it signaled Vaughan Williams’s move toward a distinctly English symphonic voice, blending expansive orchestration with modal harmonies and visionary choral writing. The work’s significance lies in its ambition: it established him as a leading British composer and opened a new path for English symphonic and choral expression.
