Do you want to know my clearest memory of this piece? My choir had scheduled it for a March 2013 concert; when we sang it through for the first time at rehearsal I suddenly realized that the woman who sat next to me was crying. The words had hit her like a ton of bricks—her fiancé had been killed in Vietnam, she said. And indeed the words are very emotional, even more so when you know their history.
The first of the three men associated with this piece was Cecil Spring Rice, a British diplomat who served as ambassador to the US starting in 1912 and who wrote a poem named “Urbs Dei”(“City of God”—an echo of Augustine) or “The Two Fatherlands.” The poem’s point was that a Christian owes allegiance both to his earthly country and to the kingdom of God. After the war Rice re-wrote the first verse to echo a more general idea of love and sacrifice, and that version is the one used today, usually referred to by its first line: “I vow to thee, my country.” In 1921 Gustav Holst, the second collaborator, was asked to set the poem to music, and he did so using the theme from “Jupiter” in The Planets, needing only to extend the music slightly to fit the text. I was amused to read that Holst’s daughter Imogen said later “the time when he was asked to set these words to music, Holst was so over-worked and over-weary that he felt relieved to discover they ‘fitted’ the tune from ‘Jupiter.’” The piece was published as a hymn to be sung in unison with orchestral accompaniment and often made an appearance at Armistice Day ceremonies. It has been used at the funeral services of many famous Britons and also that of John McCain. I’m posting a couple of the relevant videos below.