After the deaths of Elgar, Delius and Holst – all in 1934 –, Vaughan Williams was without a doubt the most prominent composer in England. A distinguished forty-year career was acknowledged by King George V when he bestowed the Order of Merit on the composer in 1935. Deeply imbued with the English traditions of both folk and art music, Vaughan Williams came as close to representing the “musical voice” of his country as any composer could hope to do. A major piece by the 64-year-old master for one of the major performing groups in the country—the Huddersfield Choral Society—was, by all accounts, a major event.
The first performance was given on October 2, 1936, at a rather dark moment in the history of the 20th century. The signs of an impending war were multiplying, causing Vaughan Williams to turn his festival commission into a fervent plea for peace. The composer used the Agnus Dei, the final movement of the Ordinary of the Mass as his point of departure because it ends with the words “Dona nobis pacem” (“Grant us peace”), but combined the liturgical Latin with texts in English: Civil War poetry by Walt Whitman, a carefully selected group of Biblical excerpts, and a passage from a speech given by British politician John Bright against the Crimean war in the 1850s. This combination of languages and literary sources was a major influence on Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem of 1962.
Vaughan Williams had known Whitman’s work since 1905; he had been inspired by the American poet to write his first symphony (“A Sea Symphony”) between 1905 and 1910. In the very last month of his life, when biographer Michael Kennedy asked him about Whitman, the 86-year-old composer replied: “I’ve never got over him, I’m glad to say.” The Whitman settings occupy the three middle movements of the cantata, framed by the religious texts. The rousing “Beat! beat! drums!” and the two laments are thus placed in a higher, and more timeless, spiritual perspective.
The brief opening movement is an anguished prayer for the soprano soloist, with expressive choral responses. Before the soloist finishes singing “Dona nobis pacem,” the “drums and bugles” enter as a transition to the high drama of the second movement. Powerful brass fanfares and wild percussion rhythms accompany the choral declamation of Whitman’s lines about how the news of war makes normal life impossible. Ushered in by a lyrical violin solo, the baritone soloist, in the third-movement “Reconciliation,” sings a moving elegy in which a soldier mourns the death of a fellow human being who fought on the other side. The beautiful modal cadence on “this soiled world” lends special poignancy to those dark words. After repeating the baritone’s melodic line in harmony, the chorus ends the movement a cappella (without instruments), against the whispered “Dona nobis pacem” of the soprano.
The drums and bugles return in the “Dirge for Two Veterans.” RVW had first thought of setting this Whitman poem to music some twenty-five years earlier. Now, in 1936, he conceived a somber, march-like melody, introduced first by the orchestra and then taken over by the chorus. Expressive arpeggios on the harp evoke the moonlit landscape whose peacefulness is shattered by the appearance of the cortege bearing the two coffins. In one striking passage of this funeral march, Mahler’s shadow seems to appear for a fleeting moment. The procession having passed, Whitman’s poem and Vaughan Williams’s music turn to lyrical reflection, with occasional reminiscences of the military signals heard earlier. The short textual phrase “my heart gives you love” provides an opportunity for a beautiful modal cadence that, as Frank Howes noted in his valuable 1954 book on Vaughan Williams, echoes “this soiled world” in the “Reconciliation” movement. The soft instrumental postlude mirrors the introduction, and leads directly to the excerpt from John Bright’s speech, delivered by the baritone as a simple recitative.
From the bottom of their hearts, the other singers send up a passionate “Dona nobis pacem,” launching the most complex of the cantata’s movements. Many moods previously heard – supplication, fear, consolation – are recapitulated in this compelling mosaic of Bible verses, culminating in a dazzling brightness of “Open to me the gates of righteousness” and the proclamation of the “Gloria.” This supreme moment of joy, unprecedented in the work, is expressed by the sounds of the piccolo, harp, organ and glockenspiel. Yet the final word belongs to introspection, as the soprano and the chorus repeat “Dona nobis pacem,” this time in a subdued and intimate manner. The a cappella texture recalls the end of the third movement, yet what was only a promise at that point is now fully realized. The calm, full (but very soft) C-major harmonies suggest that peace, so earnestly prayed for during the entire work, has finally been achieved.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona nobis pacem.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Grant us peace.
II
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! Blow!
Through the windows—through the doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field, or gathering in his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! Blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for the sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers’ bargain by day—would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! Blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
Walt Whitman
III
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled
world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near.,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
Whitman
Dona nobis pacem.
IV
Dirge for Two Veterans
The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
‘Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
Whitman
V
The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one as of old....to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on.
John Bright
Dona nobis pacem.
We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!
The snorting of his horses was heard on Dan; the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land....and those that dwell therein....
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved...
Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
Jeremiah 8:15-22
O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong.
Daniel 10:19
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former....and in this place will I give peace.
Haggai 2:9
Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall make them afraid, neither shall the sword go through their land.
Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them.
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled; and let them hear, and say, it is the truth.
And it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues.
And they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and they shall declare my glory among the nations.
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain for ever.
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.
Adapted from Micah 4:3, Leviticus 26:6, Psalms 85:10 and 118:19,
Isaiah 43:9 and 46:18-22, and Luke 2:14.
The Building of the House, Op. 79 (1967)
by Benjamin Britten (Lowestoft, England, 1913 – Aldeburgh, 1976)
In the 1960s, Benjamin Britten enjoyed a prestige in British society that few other composers had ever known. Among the official honors he had received was the Order of the Companions of Honor and the Order of Merit; in the last year of his life (1976) he was given a life peerage and was created Baron Britten of Aldeburgh.
With his life partner Peter Pears, Britten had founded a music festival in Aldeburgh in 1948, which eventually outgrew its original venue, at which point a new concert hall was built in neighboring Snape Maltings. The new facility was opened on June 2, 1967, by Queen Elizabeth II in person; the opening concert, with works by Delius, Holst and Handel, opened with a festive work composed by Britten for the occasion, The Building of the House for orchestra and chorus. It may not be a coincidence that the title recalls Beethoven’s overture, The Consecration of the House, written for the inauguration of a new theater in Vienna in 1822.
It is a testament to Britten’s genius that he was able to honor the official function with appropriately celebratory music that was, at the same time, fresh and vibrant, never dry for a moment. The work includes hymn melody, taken from 16th-century paraphrase of Psalm 127 as edited by Britten’s friend and collaborator, Imogen Holst. The hymn, surrounded by agile orchestral countersubjects, enters after an animated orchestral introduction. This outline is somewhat reminiscent of a Bach chorale fantasy, but Britten combines that form with an A-B-A design. The B section, for orchestra alone, is quiet, intensely chromatic and rhythmically complex, introducing an element of mystery. Then, a recapitulation brings back the fast tempo and the church hymn, so that the “consecration of the house” may be celebrated in style.
Except the Lord the house doth make,
And thereunto doth set his hand,
What men do build it cannot stand,
Likewise in vain men undertake
Cities and holds to watch and ward,
Except the Lord be their safeguard.
Though ye rise early in the morn
And so at night go late to bed,
Feeding full hardly with brown bread,
Yet were your labour lost and worn.
But they shall thrive whom God doth bless,
Their home shall stand through storm and stress.
Notes By Peter Laki