The words are again from Drum-Taps and are given to the baritone soloist with his message of ultimate reconciliation sung to music of notable compassion. Reconciliation (Andantino): The stridency of the previous section is banished by strings high in their register and the musings of a solo violin, in a serene slow movement typical of Vaughan Williams. Short, harsh, ejaculatory phrases convey the ruthlessness of war. As this climax subsides, the drums begin beating and the music flows without a break into the second section.īeat! beat! drums! (Allegro moderato): Trumpet calls over beating drums are a prelude to the chorus’s words from Whitman’s Drum-Taps, a declamatory description of the overwhelming effects of war on town and countryside. The chorus echoes this plea for peace and then, in a sudden discordant outburst, the soloist and chorus cry it to the heavens.
Skilfully though the libretto is compiled, Dona nobis pacem cannot be said to be a unified musical conception, but the sheer quality of the music has ensured that it has outlived the occasion for which it was written and, alas, the subject grows no less topical.Īgnus Dei (Lento): After two bars of orchestral chromatic chords, the soprano enters pianissimo with the Latin prayer from the Liturgy, her ‘Dona nobis pacem’, the work’s principal leitmotif, thrice repeated. The interpolation of the one into the other pre-echoes Britten’s scheme in his War Requiem of twenty-five years later. The words are selected from a variety of sources, principally from the scriptures and Whitman. During the rest of his life Vaughan Williams conducted this work quite often.
The first performance was given in Huddersfield on 2 October 1936, with Renée Flynn and Roy Henderson as soloists, the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Albert Coates. In an article in 1912 Vaughan Williams wrote: ‘We must cultivate a sense of musical citizenship … The composer must … live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole life of the community.’ In expressing the community’s prayer for peace in the light of the events in Germany in the 1930s, he was now practising what he had preached. This was composed for the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society in 1936, but it was also a piece of propaganda, a commentary on the state of Europe as it moved inexorably towards another major war. Perhaps because he felt it did not stand satisfyingly on its own, he put it away in a drawer, and it emerged twenty-five years later as the fourth movement of his large-scale cantata Dona nobis pacem. In 1911, following the successful launching of A Sea Symphony, he began another Whitman setting, Dirge for two veterans, from the American Civil War poem Drum-Taps. Vaughan Williams first set words by Whitman in 1904, two songs for soprano and baritone, The last invocation and The love-song of the birds.
Adaptive_ocr true Addeddate 12:46:06 Betterpdf true Bookreader-defaults mode/1up Boxid IA1143102 Catalog_time 1046 Country DE Derive_submittime 14:58:05 Disccount 3 External-identifierīaroque Identifier lp_messe-in-h-moll_johann-sebastian-bach Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s213kgzqjgc Lineage Technics SL1200MK5 Turntable + Audio-Technica AT95e cartridge > Radio Design Labs EZ-PH1 phono preamp > Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang la Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.5419 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l lat+eng Original-ppi 1200 Pages 23 Pdf_module_version 0.0.17 Ppi 600 Ripping_date 20211124113358 Ripping_operator Ripping_scanner archivelp-rip-cebu07 Ripping_software_version ArchiveCD Version 2.2.57lp Ripping_stylus archivelp-rip-cebu07-20210706-70955d6c Ripping_time 12526 Scandate 20211120043447 Scanner archivelp-cat-cebu02 Scanningcenter cebu Software_version ArchiveCD Version 2.2.For British composers at the turn of the century, the poetry of Walt Whitman had a profound fascination and attracted, among others, Delius ( Sea-Drift), Vaughan Williams ( A Sea Symphony) and Holst ( Ode to Death).