A work of the early 1950s, Arnold's Second Symphony had to battle critical opinion that held his work unfashionably tonal and melodic. The four-movement work has three concise fast movements (each from four to seven minutes long) and a more expansive slow movement (11 minutes), totaling less than a half hour. The symphony is in the "heroic" key of E flat major. Typically, Arnold concludes the tense and not-too-fast first movement with a dissonance that leaves a question as whether that key will prevail, and then lets it win out in the work's very optimistic conclusion. It is a paradox that the musical interval known as the third is a consonance in Western music, but when two or more thirds of the same type are piled on top of each other the result is dissonant. Arnold uses this dichotomy to provide the harmonic energy of the two middle movements. One is a fast, spiky scherzo; the other is the remarkable slow movement, the heart of the entire piece, in which the main theme is constantly repeated in new subtle alterations and with different orchestral sound. A truly powerful musical statement results. This is one of the finest symphonies of the twentieth-century repertoire.

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