In a 1988 biography, Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote that her husband “was an atheist throughout his later years at Charterhouse and at Cambridge, although he later drifted right into a cheerful agnosticism: he was by no means a professing Christian.”
Satirically, it was Ralph Vaughan Williams who helped the Anglican Church to compile, by way of the The English Hymnal of 1906, “a group of the perfect hymns within the English language.” For Vaughan Williams, music inhabited the realm of the non secular. In his 1920 essay, The Letter and the Spirit, Vaughan Williams opined on the revelatory nature of artwork:
Could we take it that the item of all artwork is to acquire a partial revelation of that which is past human senses and human schools – of that in reality which is non secular? And that the means we make use of to induce this revelation are these very senses and schools themselves? The human, seen, audible and intelligible media which artists (of all types) use, are symbols not of different seen and audible issues however of what lies past sense and data.’
It was texts from the E book of Revelation, together with additions from Taverner’s Bible of 1539, which impressed Vaughan Williams’ 1926 oratorio, Sancta Civitas (The Holy Metropolis). Unfolding over roughly thirty minutes in a steady stream of music, Sancta Civitas is scored for full orchestra, non-obligatory organ, a blended refrain, a semi-chorus, a baritone solo and a tenor solo. Moreover, a “distant refrain” of boys and an offstage trumpet add a spacial dimension to the music.
The rating is prefaced with a quote from Plato’s Phaedo wherein Socrates, going through his closing hours earlier than execution, contemplates the soul’s immortality:
Now to claim that these items are precisely as I’ve described wouldn’t be cheap. However that these items, or one thing like them, are true in regards to the souls of males and their habitations after loss of life, particularly for the reason that soul is proven to be immortal, this appears to me becoming and price risking to imagine. For the danger is honourable, and a person ought to sing such issues within the method of an incantation to himself.
The solemn and lamenting opening bars rise from mystical depths. We sense the murky fog and haunting, pandiatonic colours of A London Symphony. Because the solo baritone intones the primary strains of narration, the music appears to “awaken” with shimmering choral “alleluias.” And I noticed Heaven opened erupts in celebratory fanfares. Babylon the good is fallen brings a delicate, nostalgic lament crammed with distant pastoral recollections. Rebirth comes with the angelic voice of the solo violin (And I noticed a brand new heaven). A closing hymn of reward (Holy, Holy, Holy) begins with a distant trumpet name and grows into an awe-inspiring proclamation. The ultimate bars drift away with the phrases, “Behold, I come shortly, I’m the intense and the morning star. Absolutely I come shortly. Amen, even so come Lord.”
- I used to be within the spirit (Lento)
- And I noticed Heaven opened (Allegro)
- And I noticed an angel standing within the solar (Meno mosso)
- Babylon the good is fallen (Lento)
- Rejoice over her O Heavens (Allegro moderato)
- And I noticed a brand new heaven (Adagio)
- Subsequently are they earlier than the throne of God (Poco meno largo)
- And I noticed a pure river
- Holy, Holy, Holy (Andante sostenuto)
- Heaven and earth are stuffed with Thy glory (Poco animato)
Recordings
- Vaughan Williams: Sancta Civitas, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, David Hill, Andrew Staples, Matthew Brook, Winchester Cathedral Choristers, Winchester School Quiristers, The Bach Choir Chandos.internet
- Mark Elder, Hallé Orchestra and Refrain, Iain Paterson, Robin Tritschler (a dwell efficiency on the 2015 BBC Proms)
Featured Picture: the ruins of Kirkstall Abbey in West Yorkshire, England (images by Minda)
