Who was composer Vaughan Williams?
Remarkably, although Ralph Vaughan Williams was in his mid-60s at the time of composing Dona Nobis Pacem, five of his nine symphonies were still to come. That said, there was already enough in his portfolio to ensure his place in the pantheon of British composing greats, not least his groundbreaking Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis of 1910 and, four years later, The Lark Ascending. His bursting CV also included years spent collecting folksongs and editing The English Hymnal in the early part of the 20th century and, away from the sphere of music, serving as a stretcher bearer in World War I.
Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem – The Work
The year was 1936, fascism was on the rise and European democracy was under attack. Hitler had marched thousands of German troops into the Rhineland, violating the peace treaty ending the First World War; Spain was torn apart by civil war; while Mussolini had, just the year before, invaded Ethiopia, claiming it for Italy’s own. Watching from the relative safety of England, Vaughan Williams was nonetheless aghast about these assaults on freedom and democracy. The composer signed a joint letter to The Times expressing belief in these ideals. He readied to raise his voice in his music too.
The opportunity arrived in an unlikely form. Vaughan Williams was commissioned by the Huddersfield Choral Society to compose a large-scale piece marking the institution’s centenary – surely a celebratory occasion. Instead, he chose trumpets and drums not to offer unbridled optimism and triumph but to serve as a warning for the horrors of war. The dissonant discomfort of his Fourth Symphony (1935) was fresh in his ears, and that musical impulse echoed (not least in the falling semitone figure heard in both pieces) in his new cantata for soprano, baritone choir and orchestra. Dona Nobis Pacem was a fervent plea for peace.
A composer's fervent plea for peace
This wasn’t just some abstract ideal. It was also personal. Vaughan Williams had served as an ambulance driver in the First World War and seen first hand the trauma of war. He knew its history too, choosing to include words from Liberal MP John Bright’s 1855 speech against the Crimean War: ‘The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land … there is no one as of old … that he may spare and pass on.’ With its pacifist spirit and mixture of texts from the Bible, Latin Mass and poetry in English, Dona Nobis Pacem pre-echoed Britten’s War Requiem. And while it hasn’t necessarily enjoyed the same symbolic status as the Britten, which rose from the ashes of the bombed Coventry Cathedral, Dona Nobis Pacem’s expressive power, vivid writing and timeless message has kept it firmly in the repertoire. It is one of Vaughan Williams’s finest choral works.
Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem... Verdi and early inspirations
To begin, Vaughan Williams returned to an abandoned standalone piece he’d written in 1911: a setting of the poem Dirge for Two Veterans, written by Walt Whitman during the American Civil War and published in his collection Drum-Taps. Perhaps there are even earlier seeds. Ursula Vaughan Williams’s biography of her husband includes his account of hearing Verdi’s Requiem for the first time, as a student. ‘At first I was properly shocked by the frank sentimentalism and sensationalism of the music. I remember being particularly horrified at the drop of a semitone on the word “Dona”,’ he wrote (though the interval is actually a tone). ‘But in a very few minutes the music possessed me. [It was] sentimental, theatrical, occasionally even cheap, and yet was an overpowering masterpiece.’
Dona nobis pacem... What is the work's structure?
Unlikely as it seems, Verdi’s spirit lingers in Dona Nobis Pacem: in its fiery drama and sorrowful laments and, yes, its drop on the word ‘Dona’. You can hear that in the opening Agnus Dei, in which the soprano soloist immediately sets out the emotional crux of the piece with her desperate cries for peace, while the choir and orchestra erupt and take us to the edge of an abyss. That plea is ignored and, as the music moves into ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’, the murmurs of war are heard. With the orchestra at full tilt, Vaughan Williams vividly sets another Whitman poem, about the obliteration of daily life. Churches, schools, farms: no place, no person is left unscathed by the sweep of war.
A vision of serenity...
The next movement, ‘Reconciliation’, offers a vision of serenity, a solo violin becoming a voice of freedom, the baritone drawing us into the soldier’s ranks. Unsettling realisations are never far away, and one of the most striking moments comes when the baritone sings: ‘For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.’ Its sadness and compassion equals that of Britten’s setting of Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting in the War Requiem.
We then reach the ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’, with its military march echoes and dark hues: clarinets, bassoons, cellos, basses and violas. ‘The Angel of Death’ begins in suitably sombre and ominous manner, with the chorus joining as the music searches for consolation and peace. It arrives with words from the Book of Jeremiah, again sung by the baritone: ‘O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong.’ From thereon, Vaughan Williams writes music of radiance and optimism, underlining a message of unity between countries.
When was the Dona Nobis Pacem premiered?
After Albert Coates conducted the work’s premiere on 2 October 1936 in Huddersfield, The Times’s critic wrote: ‘Dr Vaughan Williams has never been a composer of the Ivory Tower by profession or practice, and his new work Dona Nobis Pacem is a tract for the time. The moral of the work – for its artistic climax is unquestionably a message for today – is the splendour and radiance of peace.’
Dona Nobis Pacem – The Best Recording
Matthew Best (conductor)
Thomas Allen (baritone), Judith Howarth (soprano); Corydon Orchestra, Corydon Singers
Hyperion CDA66655
Some conductors justifiably lean into the public nature and moral stature of Vaughan Williams’s anti-war statement, and if that’s how you see the work, then Richard Hickox’s powerful recording may well be the one for you (see ‘Three other great recordings’, above right). But Vaughan Williams believed in the individuality of his own artistic voice – listening to Verdi’s Requiem had taught him, he said, the importance of the motto ‘To thine own self be true’. Personal conviction fuels his Dona Nobis Pacem, and that impulse is beautifully captured by Matthew Best and his Corydon Singers and Orchestra in this 1993 recording.
Here, we are taken on a true musical journey, rather like the soul in Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, from fear to hope, from the rumblings of war to the promise of peace. Capturing those seamless transitions is by no means easy – the constant ebb and flow between horror and consolation, violence and serenity – yet Best unfolds it all naturally.
In the opening Agnus Dei, soprano Judith Howarth is a silvery, ethereal presence, less upfront than some soloists, and the contrast between her pleas and the orchestral eruptions immediately sets out the work’s essential conflict. The Corydon Singers are far more than the choral backing track offered on some recordings – their united, agile voices are a vital dramatic force in their own right.
Plenty of ear-catching detail...
Perhaps the recording doesn’t offer the orchestral riches of the London Symphony Orchestra in Hickox’s version, but there’s plenty of ear-catching detail, whether it is the thundering organ or the consolatory solo violin. Baritone Thomas Allen is a first-class soloist, tapping into moving tenderness and a sense of loss in ‘Reconciliation’ when he meets his enemy. The beauty and perceptiveness of Vaughan Williams’s writing at this point is highlighted: words momentarily fail, wordless instrumental solos take over, and the choir offers balm. After a ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’ that builds up to a thrilling climax, the chilling arrival of ‘The Angel of the Death’ and the bleak resignation of the choir are assuaged by Allen, who sings with gravity and compassion.
The turn to jubilation and a stirring vision of nations coming together in peace is also brilliantly managed by Best. Avoiding any suggestion of false hope or twee sentimentalism, his ending feels authentic and genuinely uplifting.
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Dona Nobis Pacem - Three Other Great Recordings
Richard Hickox (conductor)
Richard Hickox was one of the leading conductors of 20th-century British music, and his 1992 recording of Dona Nobis Pacem stands tall, with a luxury line-up of performers including bass-baritone Bryn Terfel (striking, though less inward-looking than some). Hickox’s vision of the piece is weighty, signalled immediately by his spacious tempos and Yvonne Kenny’s sorrowful soprano in the Agnus Dei. There’s often a vividly cinematic quality too, not least when the blazing LSO Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra brass throw us into the tumult of ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’. (Warner Classics 754 7882)
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Ralph Vaughan Williams (conductor)
In November 1936, Vaughan Williams picked up the baton to record Dona Nobis Pacem himself, for the first broadcast performance with the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra as well as the soloists from the Huddersfield premiere the previous month. Of all the available recordings, this is the one most fired up by Verdian drama, fearless conviction and emotional directness, and for that it is unmissable. The recorded sound is, inevitably, historical – but it doesn’t hamper this performance’s musical impact. (Ariadne ARIADNE 5019-2)
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Adrian Boult (conductor)
The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir have recorded Dona Nobis Pacem not once but twice: Adrian Boult conducted it in Kingsway Hall in 1973, while Bryden Thomson did the honours at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead in 1988. Both are excellent, but perhaps Boult, a close friend of the composer himself, has the edge – and certainly the clearer acoustic – in terms of a coherent philosophy of the piece’s architecture and emotional landscape. Baritone John Carol Case’s dignity and empathy, combined with his sense of line, also make his contributions notable.
(Warner Classics 574 7822)
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Dona Nobis Pacem... And one to avoid...
Of the 11 available recordings, none is a disaster. All have something to offer. But assuming that time to listen to all of them is at a premium, then perhaps skip the Richmond Symphony’s live recording from 2017 (released two years later). Yes, conductor Steven Smith captures the spirit of the cantata, and this is undoubtedly a snapshot of an enjoyable performance, but soprano Michelle Areyzaga takes a while to settle, and the chorus’s ensemble could be better.
