This is a dramatic, colorful, and passionate symphony, written out of the recent experience of World War I by a composer in a land distant from it. Although Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959) was already becoming recognized as one of Brazil's first major composers (and would become the most famous of all classical composers from South America), this symphony has been unduly neglected. But that is the fate of all the composer's 12 symphonies, an output that crosses virtually his entire career across a span of 41 years.

The symphony is in a somewhat more populist style than much of the music Villa-Lobos wrote during the fertile years of his attainment of artistic maturity (roughly, 1914 to 1922), when he was quite "modernistic" in many works. Villa-Lobos said the symphony was part of a "symbolic cycle" with scenarios by Doria Escragnole. They are the Symphony No. 3 (War), Symphony No. 4 (Victory) and Symphony No. 5 (Peace). In condensed form, Escragnole's text reads:

"Still the war...years go by, the combat goes on....Europe is a graveyard of unknown caves. The man from India dies alongside the man from Australia, the African is buried alongside the Canadian. Among the thunderheads of war...appears the figure of Victory, running among the combatants, cheering them on, carrying with her the olive wreath. She runs to France and begs her to lead the flower of the universe to the strains of La Marseillaise....

"She runs to the combatants in the trenches,...instilling courage in them and promising the golden hour of triumph. She mourns the dead. She kisses the forehead of those who advance....She girdles the chest of the wounded, she runs to comfort the mothers, the sisters....

"It is Victory, offering peace to the men, months of work, years of prosperity, while the plow tills the fields, the trains roll, the factories hum....Behold Victory, announcing the last trumpet calls, ready to fall silent, in the praises of redeemed peoples, of liberated races."

The symphony is a half hour long, and is scored for an expanded orchestra. In addition to a large orchestra there is a band of clarinet, saxophones, and percussion, and a fanfare group of extra brass instruments.

None of the movements is in a standard symphonic form. The first movement, Allegro impetuoso, is a rondo on two themes, and is militaristic in tone. The scherzo movement, Andantino, is second. It is here that music representing the Allied combatants is alluded to, including "La Marseillaise." This is the only explicitly nationalist music in the symphony; there is little specifically Brazilian music in the symphony.

The third movement, Andante, begins with a mournful bass clarinet theme. There is an optimistic theme that runs through the whole symphony, but whenever it appears in this section it is submerged in grief. The finale is the longest movement by far and is a succession of five sections, each tending to be more vigorous and colorful than the last.

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