Vaughan Williams' Visionary 'Dona Nobis Pacem'

This post is the latest in a survey of the classic 1960s-70s HMV recordings of Ralph Vaughan Williams' compositions. Today the focus is his haunting Dona Nobis Pacem, a magnificent work from 1936, here in a committed 1973 performance led by Sir Adrian Boult, transferred from a vintage pressing.

In his High Fidelity review of the disc, Abram Chipman writes of the composer's spirit, which is reflected in this music. He called Vaughan Williams "uncommonly generous, courageous, tender, bluntly honest, compassionate, and radiating a life-affirming optimism that occurs on such a scale rarely in the tonal arts."

"One couldn’t find a more sterling example of that greatness of heart than in the major work on this new release."

Sir Adrian Boult

While bitterly denouncing the horrors of war - which the composer well knew first hand - Vaughan Williams also maintains hope for the future, as expressed in the texts he chose for the work, largely from Walt Whitman, but also from the Catholic Mass and the Bible.

Let me quote again from Chipman: "Vaughan Williams, in his 'give us peace' [i.e., dona nobis pacem] plea, stressed the humanity of war's victims above all else. Thus, the second movement (Beat! beat! drums!) represents the angry juggernaut of militarism tramping over the everyday life of people at their studies, at their love-making, at the plow, and caring for their children.

"The third movement is a visionary elegy for solo baritone, who whispers the poignant truth that 'my enemy ... a man divine as myself is dead.' The awesomely solemn fourth section is a Dirge for Two Veterans, father and son.

"The finale returns to the Biblical and sacred vision of sources of the opening, with a brilliantly festive vision of a better and more peaceful world. In Vaughan Williams' rapturous vision (composed contemporaneously with the Fourth Symphony), cynicism and despair are banished. There is indignation and pain, of course, but dominating all is a caressing warmth for the human life that might have been."

Sheila Armstrong and John Carol Case

The performance of this important work is all that it should be. Sir Adrian leads the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra and has the great fortune to be working with two gifted soloists, soprano Sheila Armstrong, passionate and otherworldly at once in the opening Dona nobis pacem and the finale, and baritone John Carol Case, who presents the reconciliation elegy simply and eloquently.

Boult leads the Dirge for Two Veterans with great skill, the climaxes perfectly judged - as they are throughout this composition.

The recording from Kingsway Hall was considered to be a bit wooly on first release, but working from the original vinyl, the sound here is impressively live and impactful.

The LP is completed by Vaughan Williams' much earlier setting of Whitman's Toward the Unknown Region, which is well chosen for its compatibility with Dona Nobis Pacem, but is not in the composer's mature style. Its quality suffers only in comparison with the later work, however.

The download, as usual, includes complete scans, texts and reviews.

The link below is to the 16-bit, 44.1kHz version. A high resolution transfer is available upon request.

LINK to Dona Nobis Pacem and Toward the Unknown Region

The previous entries in this Vaughan Williams series have included:

• Five Tudor Portraits (Elizabeth Bainbridge, Jolhn Carol Case, conducted by David Willcocks)

• Riders to the Sea and Magnificat (Helen Watts, Margaret Price, conducted by Meredith Davies)

• An Oxford Elegy, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, Flos Campi (John Westbrook, Cecil Aronowitz, Willcocks conducting)

• Mass in G minor, Five Mystical Songs (King's College Choir, John Shirley-Quirk, Willcocks conducting)

• Sancta Civitas, Benedicite (Heather Harper, Ian Partridge, Shirley-Quirk, Willcocks conducting)

• Hodie (Janet Baker, Richard Lewis, Shirley-Quirk, Willcocks conducting)

• Serenade to Music (with Symphony No. 5) (16 soloists, Boult conducting)

Sir Adrian Boult, producer Christopher Bishop, Sheila Armstrong, John Carol Case

Vaughan Williams' Lively Settings of John Skelton

Ralph Vaughan Williams' best known homage to the Tudor period is probably the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, a soaring, spiritual work that is a cathedral in sound. Much more earthy is the set of Five Tudor Portraits, settings of verses by the 16th century poet John Skelton.

Make no mistake, the music of the Portraits is entirely a pleasure to hear, a superb achievement by a huge, idiosyncratic talent in the prime of his career. (The work was written in 1936.) As for the verse, Skelton was a writer of prodigious talent and little discretion, both apparent in the works that Vaughan Williams set.

While Skelton was a most important poet, he also was a most intemperate one. A man of the upper class, he studied at Oxford and Cambridge, became a tutor to Henry VIII and eventually a cleric. He possessed a remarkable facility with words, which he used for purposes that encompassed burlesque and invective. We encounter both in the Five Tudor Portraits.

Perhaps the best known of the Portraits is "The Tunning [i.e., Brewing] of Elinor Rumming," a wild, misogynistic take-down of a possibly real alewife (that is, brewer) who was fined for shorting her clientele. Skelton goes to great lengths to express his disgust with Rumming, with overly vivid descriptions of her grotesque appearance to accusing her of plunking bird droppings in her libations to intimations of witchcraft.

The other major Portrait is that of that of "Jane Scroop (Her Lament for Philip Sparrow)," a 21-minute disquisition in verse about the death of a pet bird. Both it and Vaughan Williams' music are ingenious - and the words are touching - but did this small sorrow require an orchestra and chorus?

A third is "Epitaph on John Jayberd of Diss," in which Skelton makes known his distaste for the late Jayberd, "suspected by all, loved by none," in a sort of quasi-Latin verse that I could not understand, my last Latin lesson having occurred some 60 years ago. There is a free translation in the text booklet.

More to my taste is the simple song, "My Pretty Bess" and the concluding "Jolly Rutterkin."

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams' settings are, as always, glorious sounding, as are the performances by some of the best that Britain had to offer in 1969, the time of the recording. This is one of a series of HMV choral recordings made in the 1960s and conducted by David Willcocks, as here, or Sir Adrian Boult. All posts were taken from original pressings and possess exceptional sound.

John Carol Case, Elizabeth Bainbridge, David Willcocks

The primary soloist is contralto Elizabeth Bainbridge, who some reviewers found much too ladylike for Elinor Rumming. (Probably true, but perhaps just as well.) Baritone John Carol Case is excellent in "My Pretty Bess." Willcocks brought in his Bach Choir for this outing, and they do fine, although again, some would have liked them to be more earthy. The New Philharmonia Orchestra sounds splendid in the comfy acoustic of Kingsway Hall.

While this is not my favorite of the Vaughan Williams choral works, I will say that the music and performance are hard not to enjoy, even for someone out of sympathy with one of the most famous poets of the English language.

November 1969 Gramophone ad