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Established in 2010
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ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hudson Chorale - War and Peace: Choral/Orchestral Masterpieces by
Haydn and Vaughan Williams
Hudson Chorale, Westchester’s largest chorus, will complete its fourth season on
Saturday, May 17, 2014, at the Irvington High School at 7:30 pm with a program
entitled War and Peace, featuring two powerful choral/orchestral works, each written
during deeply disruptive and painful periods in history. The earliest of these
compositions, Franz Josef Haydn’s Missa in Angustiis (Mass in Times of Anguish,
aka Lord Nelson Mass), was composed at a time when Napoleon was vanquishing
armies across the Continent. The later work, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ deeply moving
Dona Nobis Pacem, was written between the two world wars, and its text is based
predominantly on the Civil War poetry of Walt Whitman.
Throughout history artists have used their work to express their own intensely personal
and emotional feelings regarding armed combat: the glories of patriotism, honor, and
courage; the horrors of the battlefield; and, the scourge of defeat. Not surprisingly,
artists are also foremost among those who inspire an optimism that supports our
deepest wish that peace is within our grasp. While living in completely different
historical periods and in very different parts of the world, Austrian composer Franz Josef
Haydn, American poet Walt Whitman, and English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
are among those artists who unabashedly convey both their fears and their hopes
regarding the times in which they were living, times which are not unlike those in which
we find ourselves today.
Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) is often called the father of the symphony and the string
quartet because of his important contributions to these forms. A friend of Mozart and a
teacher of Beethoven, he was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and
in the evolution of the sonata form. Haydn wrote his famous Missa in Angustiis in 1798,
six years after France began its invasions into Austria to depose its king, and Europe
was grappling with the rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte. Some believed the “Little
Emperor” was a great revolutionary striving to bring about egalitarian reform both within
and outside of France; others (certainly the Austrians who had suffered four major
defeats at the hands of his army) saw him as nothing more than an imperialist in the
guise of a liberator. He was a figure of controversy and mixed opinion as much as
America’s own Abraham Lincoln.
Haydn, deeply depressed by the occupation of his native Austria by Napoleon’s troops,
expressed his anguish about war in this famous Mass which is thought by many to be
his greatest single work. In May of 1798, Napoleon led his army to Egypt in order to
block the British trade routes to the East but, remarkably, by the time the Mass was
premiered in September of that same year, word arrived that he had suffered a terrible
defeat in the Battle of the Nile at the hands of Admiral Horatio Nelson. From that time
forward, Missa in Angustiis was often referred to as the Lord Nelson Mass. The piece
opens in the key of D Minor, signaling Haydn’s brooding pessimism, and gradually
progresses harmonically through many dark moods of terror and hopelessness,
ultimately transcending the gloom and anguish of war and ending on a much more
sanguine and soaring note - in D Major - in the final movement, the Dona Nobis Pacem:
grant us peace.
When Haydn died in 1809, having been feted and celebrated by courts and audiences
throughout Europe, he was mourned by both the Austrians and the French. Napoleon
himself ordered a special honor guard to be placed at his house, and high-ranking
French officers escorted the body of the great composer to its final resting place. An
extraordinary musician had managed to bring battlefield enemies together in a final act
of mutual respect and veneration: grant us peace.
The American Civil War (1861-1865) had a profound impact on poet Walt Whitman
(1819-1892). During the course of the conflict he composed a collection of poems
based on his observations and feelings called Drum Taps which were published at the
conclusion of the war. The tone of the poems changed along with the progression of
the conflict, starting out with a love of democracy and the patriotic hope that bringing an
end to slavery and preserving the Union were ideals worth fighting for. However, as a
volunteer assisting the wounded and dying soldiers in Washington, witnessing first-hand
the horrific consequences of battle and the pain of human suffering all around him, his
lofty ideals were shaken to the core as he came to grips with the price of war. Students
of American literature are familiar with three poems in his Civil War collection – Beat!
Beat! Drums!, Reconciliation, and Dirge for Two Veterans – which would one day
become part of the text of a brilliant choral and orchestral work by a non-American.
These three poems stand in sharp contrast to the exuberant spirit of I Hear America
Singing which Whitman composed prior to the start of the war when his idealism and
patriotism were soaring.
When Whitman died in 1892 at the age of 73, the English composer Ralph Vaughan
Williams (1872-1958) was just a 20 year-old young man of privilege, still studying music,
not at all aware that he would go on to develop a unique style that would earn him a
reputation as the first truly English composer of the twentieth century. In the early
1900’s, as literacy rates and the amount of printed music began to rise in England,
Vaughan Williams began traveling the countryside, transcribing and preserving
traditional folk songs, carols and melodies that he feared would disappear with the
decline in oral tradition. It was then that he rejected the European masters, preferring
the beauty of those simple melodies and their connection to the lives of ordinary people,
subsequently incorporating those folk styles and melodies into his own music.
Before the beginning of WW I, Vaughan Williams set Whitman’s vivid and moving Dirge
for Two Veterans into a composition that he ultimately put aside for over two decades.
When he was commissioned to write a choral work in 1936, a period between the stillraw scars of WW I and the unraveling of events leading up to WW II, he resurrected
Dirge for Two Veterans and expanded the piece to include the text of Whitman’s Beat!
Beat! Drums! and Reconciliation. He went on to add Parliamentarian John Bright's
Angel of Death speech during Britain’s Crimean War and sections of both the Latin
mass and the Bible. The result was a powerful anti-war message with the optimistic title
of Dona Nobis Pacem (grant us peace). In explaining why the composer included the
words of an American poet in the piece, his biographer Simon Heffer said that his main
inspiration is drawn not from the soil of England, but from the whole world going mad
around him. Today, Dona Nobis Pacem remains one of the most moving works in the
entire choral repertoire and is frequently performed throughout the world. Ralph
Vaughan Williams was so revered by the English at the time of his death in 1958 that he
was laid to rest with full honors in Westminster Abby.
Music lovers won’t want to miss this extraordinary programming of two powerful
masterworks, featuring professional soloists along with the Hudson Chorale. A full
orchestra will emphasize the striking dynamic changes in the music that correspond to
the changing tone and content of the text. One of the most heart-pounding moments of
the program is Whitman’s stirring Beat! Beat! Drums! – Blow! Bugles! Blow! soaring into
every corner of the auditorium, as the drums beat and the bugles blow, bringing a
terrifying message with every note: here comes the war! In spite of both pieces being
inspired by the insanity and despair of the troubling times in which they were composed,
each one ends with the same gentle, heart-felt prayer for the future: Dona nobis pacem:
grant us peace.
Following the concert, the audience is invited to join the performers for an informal
reception, a long-standing Hudson Chorale tradition. Tickets are $25, $10 for students,
and can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling (914) 332-0133, or through
the website: www.hudsonchorale.org. Irvington High School is located at 40 North
Broadway, Irvington, NY. Handicap parking is available.