New Millennium Strings

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Dona Nobis Pacem

English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in Gloucestershire. He died in London in 1958. His mother Margaret Susan was a member of the famed Wedgwood and Darwin families. Vaughan Williams' early life was absorbed in art, poetry, and music. His first instrument was the organ, but he began to play the violin at age 7. He studied at the Royal College of Music, and later at Trinity College in Cambridge. His earliest teachers included Charles Wood, C. Hubert, H. Parry, and Charles Stanford. Later, however, he studied with Maurice Ravel. Vaughan Williams desired to create his own musical style that would provide a musical expression for "the whole English-speaking community on both sides of the Atlantic." His passion for music was drawn from English folk song, hymnody, and literature; however, his compositional skills were rooted in the European tradition of Bach and Handel and Debussy and Ravel.

In 1911, Vaughan Williams had completed A Sea Symphony and then he wrote a choral setting of Walt Whitman's Dirge for Two Veterans based on the American Civil War poems. This composition was put away for 25 years, and later it emerged as the fourth movement of the cantata Dona Nobis Pacem (1936).

Vaughan Williams turned to composition while in search of personal tranquility. His musical exodus occurred during the politically distracting years of the 1930s. The possibility of a world war was looming. The composer produced Dona Nobis Pacem as his statement of the consequences of going to war. The six continuous movements illustrate strife, fear, mourning, and reconciliation.

Agnus Dei is a prayer sung pleadingly by the soprano to "Grant us peace." The prayer is an urgent call for help, but the prayer's message is dominated near the end of the movement by beating drums. The second movement, Beat! Beat! Drums! is based on a Walt Whitman Civil War poem entitled Drum Taps. The poem depicts war and how it "invades and overwhelms all other activities in town and countryside." The orchestration is strident, loud, and harsh.

In the third movement, Reconciliation, the strings depict a more serene mood, which provides an emotional background for the baritone's words of healing. The fourth movement, Dirge for Two Veterans, is now used by Vaughan Williams as a visitation from his musical past. The text describes the double grave of a father and son, "Two veterans dropped together" on the battlefield. The message is framed by a cold and impersonal snare drum march. Hauntingly, the soprano enters again, reiterating her cry for peace.

Movement five, The Angel of Death Has Been Abroad, is based on a speech given in 1855 by John Bright at the House of Commons in a debate on the Crimean war. The text now turns away from death towards peace: "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 two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare us and pass on."

The final movement, O Man, Greatly Beloved depicts an assurance of peace sung by the baritone soloist. The chorus and orchestra join together in expressing the concise and elegant contrapuntal texture. Finally, the Christmas message of "peace, good-will toward men" is sung. The cantata concludes with the soprano's last prayerful statement, "Dona nobis pacem."

-- program notes by Laurien Jones

November, 2002