What is the story?

As the Cinderella of string instruments, the viola rarely gets the best tunes. But Vaughan Williams was among a number of composers who admired and played this overlooked instrument. Another draw for Vaughan Williams was the virtuoso viola player Lionel Tertis, who gave the work’s first performance. Tertis grew up not far from us here at the Barbican, in ‘squalid’ Spitalfields. Holst, Bax, Bliss and Walton were among the other composers to write for him. In Flos Campi, however, the viola, instead of being pitted ‘against’ the orchestra in the way of a conventional concerto, is woven into the musical fabric.

What is the music like?

The music is accordingly enigmatic and veiled in suggestion, but in the third section we can perhaps hear the viola solo as the lonely female, ‘sick with love’. We might match the military feel of the following section with the arrival of Solomon’s carriage, borne by soldiers, or the final part, headed ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart’, as lines blissfully intertwined to become one.

Because they were expecting something more straightforwardly pastoral in style, audiences were at first perplexed by Flos Campi, but in its hazy lushness and soul-searching intimacy, Vaughan Williams created arguably his most personal and sensual work.

What is the story?

Vaughan Williams witnessed first-hand the horrors of conflict as a stretcher-bearer and an artillery officer during World War I. He also endured the passing of friends and colleagues. 'I sometimes dread coming back to normal life with so many gaps,’ Vaughan Williams wrote to Holst, lamenting his losses. While Vaughan Williams denied this, there is no doubt that Dona nobis pacem is a cry against the violence and futility of war.

What is the music like?

The soprano opens with a heartfelt call for peace, echoed by the anguished choir. Before the plea is finished, drums enter and bugles sound for the first Whitman setting, capturing the ferocious reach of war. This subsides into ‘Reconciliation’, in which a soldier recognises his fallen enemy as a fellow human.

Drums return for the ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’, which begins as a distant procession for a father and son. This movement also contains some transcendent, mystical writing, reflecting the spectral rising up in the moonlit sky of the vision of a grieving mother.

In the fifth movement, the baritone invokes the 1855 parliamentary speech which evoked the ‘Angel of Death’ in arguing against the Crimean War. After another plea for peace (‘Dona nobis pacem’) come words from Jeremiah, heightening the choir’s desperate realisation that of this there is no hope.

I Agnus Dei (Lento)

Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona nobis pacem
(Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,
Grant us peace)

II Beat! beat! drums! (Allegro moderato)

Through the windows – through the doors burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet – no happiness
must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing
his field, or gathering in his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums – so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! beat! drums! – Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities – over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for the sleepers at night in the houses?
No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day – no brokers or
speculators – would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? Would the singer attempt to sing?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums – you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! beat! drums! – Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley – stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid – mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;
Make even the trestles to shake the dead
where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums – so loud you bugles blow.

(Walt Whitman, 1819–92)

III Reconciliation (Andantino)

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly,
wash again and ever again this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

(Walt Whitman, 1819–92)

IV Dirge for Two Veterans

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.

Dona nobis pacem

Text & Translation

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined,
‘Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

(Walt Whitman, 1819–92)

V The Angel of Death has been abroad

The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land;
you may almost hear the beating of his wings.
There is no one as of old … to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two
side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on.

Dona nobis pacem
(Grant us peace)

We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health,
and behold trouble!
The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan;
the whole land trembled at the sound
of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are
come, and have devoured the land ...
and those that dwell therein ...

The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved ... Is there no balm in Gilead?;
is there no physician there? Why then is not the health
of the daughter of my people recovered?

(John Bright, 1811–89 / Biblical verses)

VI O man greatly beloved, fear not

O man greatly beloved, fear not, peace be unto
thee, be strong, yea be strong.

The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of
the former ... and in this place will I give peace.

Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

And none shall make them afraid, neither shall
the sword go through their land.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness
and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness
shall look down from heaven.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them.
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people
be assembled; and let them hear, and say, it is the truth.

And it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues.
And they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them ...
And they shall declare my glory among the nations. For as the
new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain
before me, so shall your seed and your name remain forever.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Dona nobis pacem (Grant us peace)

(Biblical verses)

The London Symphony Orchestra

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The LSO was established in 1904 as one of the first orchestras shaped by its musicians. Since then, generations of remarkable talents have built our reputation for quality, ambition and a commitment to sharing the joy of music with everyone. We perform some 70 concerts every year as Resident Orchestra at the Barbican, with our family of artists: Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, Conductor Emeritus Sir Simon Rattle, Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda and François-Xavier Roth, Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, and Associate Artists Barbara Hannigan and André J Thomas. We have major artistic residencies in Paris, Tokyo and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and tour regularly in Asia and the US.

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The London Symphony Chorus

The London Symphony Chorus was founded in 1966 to complement the work of the London Symphony Orchestra. The LSC has performed with leading orchestras, frequently with the LSO and also with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic orchestras.

In recent seasons, the LSC has performed Dmitri Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, ‘Babi Yar’, with Gianandrea Noseda; Franz Schubert’s Mass in A-flat and Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé with François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles; The Dante Project with Thomas Adès and Koen Kessels at the Royal Opera House; Luigi Dallapiccola’s Il prigionero with Sir Antonio Pappano; works by Karol Szymanowski and Johannes Brahms with Sir Simon Rattle; Howard Goodall’s Never to Forget (online and subsequently in St Paul’s Cathedral); Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem with Lionel Sow (Chorus Director of the Choeur de l’Orchestre de Paris); the premiere of Julian Anderson’s Exiles (a joint LSO/LSC commission); and Errollyn Wallen’s After Winter with Simon Halsey in the Spitalfields Festival.

The Chorus is an independent charity run by its members. It is committed to artistic excellence, to equality and diversity and the vocal development of its members. It engages actively in the musical life of London – seeking new members and audiences as well as commissioning and performing new works.