‘A London Symphony’ and ‘Tono-Bungay’

Abstract

SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH in 1958 Vaughan Williams told Michael Kennedy, who was already committed to writing the composer's ‘musical biography’, that the coda or Epilogue to the final movement of his A London Symphony had a link with the end of H.G. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay, in which London is evoked as the book's narrator and central character passes down the Thames through the city to the open sea. ‘For actual coda see end of Wells's Tono Bungay’ was the composer's laconic advice. Kennedy then quotes two short passages from the final chapter of Tono-Bungay, and these have since become a standard point of reference for other writers on the symphony. They have appeared in record sleeve and programme notes, and in other places, such as Hugh Ottaway's BBC Music Guide to the Vaughan Williams Symphonies. The most frequently quoted passage is the following:Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass—pass. The river passes—London passes, England passes…