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The UMKC Signature Series Finale Concert, featuring the Conservatory Orchestra and Choirs under the direction of Robert Olson, will take place on Saturday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. at White Recital Hall. The concert includes four masterworks: Johannes Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, Chen Yi's Kansas City Capriccio and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem.

The centerpiece of the program is Vaughan Williams' deeply moving and hauntingly evocative Dona Nobis Pacem. He wrote the work in 1936 to mark the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society, one of Britain's most famous choirs. For this cantata for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra, the composer chose texts from the Latin Mass (Agnus Dei), poems by Walt Whitman ("Beat, Beat, Drums," "Reconciliation" and "Dirge for Two Veterans"), John Bright's impassioned speech to the British Parliament from 1855 ("The Angel of Death"), and the Old Testament.

Dona Nobis Pacem is indicative of Vaughan Williams' broad compositional palette, one that extends far beyond his general reputation as an arranger of folk songs (though he was certainly marvelous in this regard). He studied at the Royal College of Music with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, whose admiration for Johannes Brahms bordered on adulatory. He also studied for a short time in Berlin with Max Bruch, who at the time was best known as a choral composer. And for a few months in 1908, Vaughan Williams was in Paris, where as a student of Maurice Ravel he was exposed to Impressionism and the refined and perhaps even sensual qualities of French neoclassicism. Elements of these various experiences are evident in Dona Nobis Pacem: the fundamental idea of musical structure from Stanford, effective choral writing from Bruch, and innovative timbres and harmonies from Ravel.

The cantata is filled with war-related references, as one would expect in a work whose title translates as "grant us peace." Whitman's texts concerning the American Civil War, Bright's immortal words opposing the Crimean War, Vaughan Williams' own experiences in World War I, and the growing unrest in Europe in the late 1930s are all evident. Vaughan Williams served as a stretcher carrier in France during the First World War and lost many friends in the conflict.  His Third Symphony, "Pastoral" (1916-1921), is a musical memorial to the "War to End All Wars." The Fourth Symphony (1931-34), by contrast, is an aggressive work that aurally depicts the emerging fear in Europe at the time. The elegiac tone of the Pastoral Symphony and the sense of urgency in the Fourth Symphony continue in Dona Nobis Pacem.

As Vaughan Williams studied with an ardent admirer of Brahms (Stanford) and also with Ravel, it seems entirely appropriate to hear music by both of these influences on the same concert as Dona Nobis Pacem.  Brahms wrote his Academic Festival Overture in 1880 when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau, and the Ballet Russes gave the premiere of Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé in Paris in 1912. The score is one of Ravel's most Impressionist-inspired works, and is particularly famous for its extensive flute solo and soloistic passages for alto flute and E-flat clarinet.  

Near the end of the Dona Nobis Pacem comes a glorious, hope-filled apotheosis on the title words. This effervescent sense of joy is also evident in Chen Yi's Kansas City Capriccio. Originally for choir and wind ensemble and first performed in 2000, the work's vibrancy and effusiveness make it a fitting complement to what promises to be an extraordinary musical event.

UMKC Conservatory of Music
Signature Series Finale
Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem
Saturday, April 25 at 7:30 p.m.
White Recital Hall
4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at www.conservatory.umkc.edu

By William A. Everett

Classical Contributor (Past writer)

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