Britain’s Great “Song of Thanksgiving” from Its Great Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams

Introduction:

What a great centerpiece to a concert centered around the theme of thankfulness! Vaughan Williams’¹ 15-minute-long work consists of a soloist, adult mixed choir, speaker, children’s choir, and orchestra and was commissioned by the BBC in late 1944 to be performed once the hoped-for and expected victory over the Axis powers was accomplished.

Here’s a description of the piece from the publisher of the sheet music, the Oxford University Press: “Originally entitled ‘Thanksgiving for Victory,’ ‘A Song of Thanksgiving’ is a powerful and moving work that celebrates the Allies’ victory in World War II. It was first recorded in 1944 while the war was still ongoing, but was not broadcast until victory had been achieved in May of the following year. Comprising seven movements, it sets texts from the Bible alongside words by Shakespeare and Kipling, lending the work a sense of timelessness and grandeur.”²

Isn’t it great that there was the will and the appetite after years of war and destruction to commission a piece of music to celebrate victory? There’s no information available on how much or whether Vaughan Williams was paid for the piece, and it’s rarely performed nowadays because it was written for a specific occasion. One reviewer on Amazon for a CD performance says, “Vaughan Williams’ ‘A Song of Thanksgiving’ is the greatest piece of music ever written that almost no one has heard.”

Vaughan Williams chose the texts himself, and they are drawn largely from the Bible or the English Book of Common Prayer, but there’s also Shakespeare and Kipling in the mix. Every single section, though, whether drawn directly from a religious text or not, references the idea of God and his providence as a source of victory and of hope for the future. These choices raise the question of Vaughan Williams’ own religious beliefs: did he believe in God, and especially a God who was active in the affairs of men? Well, not really. He was raised in a fairly strict religious home—we might use the Americanism “evangelical”—but then decided that atheism was a more attractive option once he went off to college. As time went on, he settled into what has been called “a cheerful agnosticism.” He’s also been labeled a “Christian atheist,” but that term says more about the descriptor than the descriptee, if I may put it that way. It’s an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and very much well meant, I’m sure. In the end, though, such attempts are doomed to failure and completely unnecessary. As someone who believes very strongly in the sovereignty of God, I can appreciate the texts Vaughan Williams chose without having to trouble myself with what he may or may not have thought about them himself. To sum up, here’s a famous line from the biography that Vaughan Williams’ second wife wrote: “There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.”³

¹Yes, it is always “Vaughan Williams” and not just “Williams,” since the composer’s surname is “double barrelled,” meaning that it has two parts, whether hyphenated or not. Another British composer with this type of surname is Andrew Lloyd Webber. Also–it’s “Rafe,” not “Ralph.”

²Description, “A Song of Thanksgiving”

³R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Ursula Vaughan Williams (1988)

Notes on the Text:

SOPRANO SOLO AND CHORUS:

Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers; and to be praised and exalted above all forever.
And blessed is thy glorious and holy Name; and to be praised and glorified above all forever.
Blessed art thou in the temple of thine holy glory; and to be praised and exalted above all forever.
Blessed art thou on the glorious throne of thy kingdom, and to be praised and glorified above all forever.

“Song of the Three Holy Children”¹

Vaughan Williams may not have been a practicing or believing Christian, but he spent many years of his adult career as an organist and choir director in Anglican churches and would have been very familiar with the texts of the Book of Common Prayer. A version of this text is included in that source and must have struck him as appropriate for this commission.  While there are plenty of other passages of praise to God that he could have used, this one has a context that makes it particularly apt for use here.

So who are “the three holy children”? (Other translations say “holy youths,” which is better wording.) They are Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego, three young men who were taken to Babylon in 526 BC after King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and conquered Israel. Daniel the prophet was captured along with them, and their story is included in the third chapter of his book. Nebuchadnezzar was a real megalomaniac and decided at some point to build an idol of himself to force everyone to fall down and worship him. But the three youths refused, since they worshipped God alone. (We don’t know why Daniel himself isn’t included in this story.) The punishment was to be thrown into a “fiery furnace.” But what happened?

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.²

The song of praise to God for his deliverance that the young men sing occurs while they’re “walking in the midst of the fire.” Doesn’t that image fit neatly and completely in with the theme of Vaughan Williams’ piece as a whole? Great Britain has just passed through the fire of World War II and come out victorious on the other side. They have refused, one might say, to bow the knee to the forces of evil unleashed by the Nazi regime.

One aspect of the story deserves attention here, since for both the young men and Britain the outcome was never a foregone conclusion. Here’s what the three youths said to Nebuchadnezzar before he had them tossed into the furnace:

Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.³

In other words, if I may paraphrase: “We believe that God is able to deliver us, and we believe that he will. But maybe we’re wrong about what God will do. We can’t know what the future holds. All we can do is say that we will not give in to your idolatrous demand.” We forget, because we’re looking back on history, that Britain stood alone against Hitler for some time. Churchill would not agree to a negotiated peace as France and other European countries had done. Instead, he said, “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.”

SPOKEN WORD:

Vaughan Williams has a male speaker perform the following lines from one of Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry V, as the king gives credit to God for England’s totally unexpected victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Henry says:

O God, thy arm was here,
And not to us, but to thy arm alone
Ascribe we all! . . .. Take it, God,
For it is none but thine.⁴

Shakespeare depicts Henry as perhaps a bit more pious than he really was. Later lines in the scene have him say,

Come, go we in procession to the village,
And be it death proclaimèd through our host
To boast of this or take that praise from God
Which is His only.

To which one of his captains, Fluellen, replies:
Is it not lawful, an please your Majesty, to
tell how many is killed?

King Henry: Yes, captain, but with this acknowledgment:
That God fought for us.

Vaughan Williams seems to be warning the British against excessive pride and taking credit for their victory. Some excellent commentary accompanying a YouTube performance video says that the work is “patriotic but never jingoistic or triumphalist.”⁵

SPOKEN WORD AND CHORUS:

Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power and the glory.
Thine is the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and earth is thine.
Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.⁶

The immediate occasion for these lines is King David’s prayer of praise to God as he presents all the materials he has gathered for the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. I find it telling that as David finishes the prayer he says, “for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.” (v. 14b) In that context, David’s prayer of praise is an echo of King Henry’s words in the previous section. Deliberate on Vaughan Williams’ part? I think so!

SOLOIST, SPEAKER AND CHORUS:

Solo:
O give thanks unto the Lord because he is gracious: For his mercy endureth for ever.

“Song of the Three Holy Children,” as noted above

Speaker and Chorus:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to comfort all the mourn; to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.⁷

This passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah comes from a section of several chapters near the end that look forward to God’s future fulfillment of the promises made to the nation of Israel. Vaughan Williams has taken several passages from this book (and remember—he chose the texts) that can be applied to Britain’s roles in the war. Look at the ways in which horrors and tragedy are to be reversed: captives freed, mourners comforted, beauty created from destruction, joy replacing grief, and celebration replacing sadness. You may especially note two figurative images: the “oil of joy” and the “garment of praise.” Isaiah is referring to actual practices in his culture when celebrations and feasts occurred: anointing celebrants’ heads with scented oil and wearing special ceremonial robes. But those customs shouldn’t be all that strange to us moderns. We dress up for special occasions and wear scent, and certainly our society can be very judgmental about how people dress.

CHORUS:

Go through, go through the gates, prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones.
Lift up a standard for the people.
Behold, the lord hath proclaimed unto the ends of the world,‐say ye,
“Behold thy salvation cometh, Behold, his reward is with him and
his work before him.”
And they shall call them the holy people, the redeemed of the lord:
and thou shalt be called “Sought out,” a city not forsaken.⁸

SPEAKER:

And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former
desolations. And they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations
of many generations.⁹

Both of these passages are concerned with repairing the destruction in the aftermath of war. Remember that Vaughan Williams is choosing his texts before the war is actually over. Big chunks of London are in ruins as a result of the Blitz, to say nothing of Europe in general and Germany in particular. I wonder if the composer foresaw the enormous celebrations that were going to occur once victory was secured and was warning, “Not so fast, people! There’s going to be a lot of work to do after this is all over!”

SPEAKER AND CHORUS:

Speaker:
Violence shall be no more heard in thy land,
wasting nor destruction within thy borders;
but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.

Chorus:
But thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise.¹⁰

A hope for peace here, sadly unfulfilled but never forgotten.

CHORUSES:

Children’s Voices:
Land of our birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be;
When we are grown and take our place
As men and women with our race.
Father in Heaven who lovest all,
O help thy children when they call.
That they may build from age to age
An undefiled heritage.

Adult Voices:
Teach us the strength that cannot seek,
By deed, or thought, to hurt the weak;
That, under thee, we may possess
Man’s strength to comfort man’s distress.
Teach us delight in simple things,
The mirth that has no bitter springs;
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And love to all men ‘neath the sun.

 All Voices:
Land of our birth, our faith, our pride,
For whose dear sake our fathers died;
O Motherland, we pledge to thee,
Head, heart and hand through the years to be.¹¹

For those of us who think of Rudyard Kipling primarily as the author of the Just So Stories, it can be surprising to run across his poetry, which is often quite lyrical. Vaughan Williams chose several verses from a longer Kipling poem as, it seems, a reminder that Britain’s future as a country depends on its children. I’m sure his use of a children’s choir has caused some headaches for programming directors, but that voicing is an effective pairing with the ideas. The section ends on a great swelling chord with all voices joining in and you think the whole thing’s over, but not so.

SOPRANO SOLO:

The Lord shall be thine everlasting light,
And the days of thy mourning shall be ended.¹²

There’s one more thing to be said: the promise of eternity and its freedom from grief. And the piece ends quietly.

YouTube Video:

As mentioned at the outset, this piece isn’t performed very often. I can’t find a live performance video, but this one is a very good replacement, with appropriate imagery inserted, from a classic recording:

Notes on Textual Sources:

¹Used in the English Book of Common Prayer and included in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox versions of the Jewish Bible Book of Daniel

¹Daniel 3:24-25 KJV

³Daniel 3:17-18 KJV

⁴Henry V, Act IV, Scene 8

⁵From the YouTube channel of “Colin”

⁶I Chronicles 29:11 KJV

⁷Isaiah 61:1-3 KJV (with cuts)

⁸Isaiah 62:10=12 KJV

⁹Isaiah 61:4 KJV

¹⁰Isaiah, 60:18 KJV

¹¹Rudyard Kipling, “The Children’s Song” from Puck of Pook’s Hill

¹²Isaiah 60:20