Ralph Vaughan Williams’ (RVW’s) Dona nobis pacem is a piece mostly in English, on texts mostly by American Walt Whitman with some John Bright and a few Bible verses here and there, and that one phrase of Latin. Why?
I have to say that the Latin title makes it harder to explain this piece in the context of our concert about the Civil War on Saturday (shameless plug). Most people associate Latin words with a church choir. Heck, most people associate any choir with a church choir, which we are definitely not! (No offense to church choirs, but it’s not who we are.) The title makes the work sound like it will be another Latin churchy piece.
But it’s nothing like that. It’s in turn dramatic and bombastic and tender and quiet and martial and ecstatic. Some of the larger poems of Whitman’s that are in this work are “Leaves of Grass,” “Drum Taps” and “Dirge for Two Veterans,” gritty Civil War texts. In fact, the only Latin is those three words in the title, “Grant Us Peace,” and therein is the essence of the work.
I think this is my 4th time with this work, maybe 5th. (You know you are getting old when you don’t know any long how many times you’ve conducted a piece!) And as I re-study it I continue to learn about it. I think the entire piece is really a plea for peace, a breaking-down of “war and all its deeds of carnage.”
Let me quote a little of Whitman first. After an opening movement on the words Dona nobis pacem, clearly pleading, begging, fading away, the second movement begins with martial bugle calls – a call to war! Whitman’s text states that war gets into everything: every bit of normal life is affected by war:
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through 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, plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
Accompanying these words and the bugle calls are marching rhythms in the percussion and lower strings, our boys marching off to war. But at the end of the second movement those rhythms are transformed into the milder rhythms of the third movement, and the key of E minor is transformed into E major. RVW and Whitman tell us that despite war’s affect on everyday life:
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 soil’d world:
Here is some of RVW’s most beautiful music.
The “Dirge for Two Veteran” moves back and forth between military music and shimmering “moon music” for these words:
The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d 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.
And here is even more beautiful music as the beauty of the moonlight transforms the double grave.
But the best is yet to come. Much of this piece is in the military meter of 4/4, four beats per measure, like marching. At the end of the piece RVW quotes the Bible: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” At this point RVW is still technically in 4/4, but the phrases of the music are anything but: they are two’s and three’s and four’s, completely breaking down the martial meter. Transforming the meter of war into a call for peace. Growing from the double basses to the cellos and up through the entire chorus and orchestra. Finally bursting out in a glorious vision of what could be.
I love this piece.
I love these guys.