Since Symphony No.1 is the Sea Symphony, with soloists and chorus, the London Symphony rates as Vaughan Williams's first large-scale orchestral work. Already in the early 1900s he had made some sketches for a symphonic poem about London, the city he loved and in which he lived, but the extra impetus that fired it across the line into existence was a chance remark by the composer George Butterworth one evening in 1911: just as he was getting up to go, he said quite abruptly: “You know, you ought to write a symphony.” Such a thing had never occurred to Vaughan Williams, but from that moment he perceived what had to be done, and worked on the symphony throughout 1912 and 1913. It was first performed in Queen's Hall in March 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye, and was an immediate success.

sources for original version(s)

(A)  Autograph score of original version (1913), sent to Fritz Busch in Germany in July 1914, not recovered after the war; lost

B  Reconstructed score (1914/15) by VW with the assistance of three copyists (one of whom was Butterworth) from the manuscript orchestral parts, in the British Library (Add. Ms. 51317). I is autograph; II-IV are in copyists’ hands, with autograph additions and corrections

The reconstruction was first performed in Bournemouth in February 1915, conducted by Dan Godfrey; but the composer remained dissatisfied, and made some cuts and other revisions for some performances under Adrian Boult in 1918. He continued to revise it until 1920, when it was finally published, with a dedication to the memory of Butterworth who had been killed at the Somme in 1916, and performed at Queen's Hall in May 1920 under Albert Coates.

E,P  First edition score and parts, published by Stainer & Bell in 1920. (The recent Dover reprint claims to be of E, but is in fact F, see below)