Dona nobis pacem is both a prayer and a warning. On a universal level the cantata is a prayer that mankind will mature to discard warfare and strife; in the particular context of its time, it is a warning that the unstable political situation of the 1930s was sliding disastrously towards another war. Because it is the prayer that is uppermost in the work's dynamic, Vaughan Williams does not allude to specific contemporary events, but the message is clear; all the more so by the universality of the texts, setting a fragment of the Latin Mass, Walt Whitman, John Bright and conflations from the Bible.

The choice of texts is typical of Vaughan Williams: Whitman the poet so admired by his generation for his freedom of thought and form; the 1611 Authorized Version of the Bible, part and parcel of anyone born into the Anglican tradition at that time; and lastly, John Bright, reflecting the liberal, radical background of his Wedgwood and Darwin ancestors. The cantata, cast in five movements, was composed in 1936 to a commission from the Huddersfield Choral Society and was first performed at their centenary concert on 2 October 1936; Albert Coates was the conductor; Renée Flynn and Roy Henderson, the soloists.

From the outset the music of the Agnus Dei creates a mood suggestive of the imminence of an unknown danger. This is created by the briefest of orchestral preludes, a unison D becoming a chord where the semitone clash of C sharp/D is the telling root of the tension. The soprano takes up the interval on the word 'Dona', and as such it becomes symbolic throughout the work of mankind's plea for peace. Chorus and soprano intone the prayer alternatively quietly and in desperate outbursts of near despair. The movement closes with the soprano's semitonal 'pacem' pleas sullied by the realities of the approach of war as hinted at by the percussion.

In the second movement, the 'drums' and 'bugles' of Whitman's lines from Drumtaps find their equivalent in music as the conflict breaks out. The effect of war on the community and the common man is the subject. All other considerations are swept aside; war dominates. In death, peace is found between enemies. As the baritone sings the opening line of Whitman's Reconciliation, for the first time in the cantata there is a glimpse of a world free from strife. In the meantime the scars of war are healed in a mood of serenity. At the close the soprano appropriately reiterates her plea 'Dona nobis pacem', but now with a poignant minor third to complete her phrase.

The honoring of the dead of battle, the ritualistic burial of heroes now takes the foreground in this magnificent setting of Whitman's Dirge for Two Veterans. It dates back to 1908 but the composer, sensing that it belonged within the context of a larger piece, set it aside until it found its natural place in this work nearly thirty years later. Slow military tattoos and the tread of the dead march portray the processional to the grave. The movement's noble hymn-like melodies are a reminder of Vaughan Williams's twin affinity with the Anglican tradition and folk-song. Notable musical imagery includes the alliterative 'dropped' as the veterans fall one after the other.

The first part of the final movement reaches the nadir of bleakness; there is no respite from the Angel of Death despite a further desperate outcry for peace. Jeremiah's words of anguish become all the more poignant being set as a canon between the men's and the women's voices, as though they are utterly trapped in a situation from which there is no escape. With a change of key to D flat major, however, the nodal point of the work is reached and a new mood ushered in by the baritone's message of hope. The chorus takes up the vision of a world without strife and at the end the soprano's prayer has attained concord with no hint of semi-tonal angst. During the final chorus both the music itself and the orchestration clearly suggest the pealing of bells. Surely these are the bells of the English churches?, the bells that soon would be silenced for several years, but which would ring out jubilantly, as in the music here, on 8 May 1945.

Writer: Andrew Burn