Dona Nobis Pacem

On our return to England on 13 November, we were privileged to hear a performance of Britten's War Requiem sung in Coventry Cathedral.  Coventry's medieval cathedral was bombed into a ruin on the night of 14 November, 1940.  The magnificent new building, set among the ruins of the old, was completed in 1963, and Britten's requiem was commissioned for its opening.  My sister sang in the chorus this November.  Near her stood a woman who had also sung in the work, with Britten conducting, in 1963.  In the audience were people who lived through the night of 14 November, 1940.

Britten set the requiem mass in Latin, but between the standard movements he set poems by Wilfred Owen, poems written during and about Owen's experiences as a soldier during the first world war.  The work is stark and grand and heartrending.   I sang in this piece when the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra performed it in 2007.  It's beyond me how anyone, having heard this music and text, could contemplate making war.

Britten sets the words dona nobis pacem as a cry in the wilderness.  Before the third Agnus Dei the tenor sings the verse of Owen:

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

After the chorus mutters the agnus, the dona nobis pacem is sung by the tenor: the first five notes of the F# major scale followed by the first five notes of the c minor scale dropping back again to f#.  Dona nobis is major moving up, pacem is minor, also climbing, but twisted somehow and as painful as beautiful. Takes your breath away.  Listen to it.

Last night, we were privileged again to hear, in the York Minster Chapter House, a concert of renaissance English choral music performed by Stile Antico, a group of 13 splendid young singers.  The program was centered on a mass by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585).  Tallis, and the other composers on the program (William Byrd, Robert White, John Taverner, John Sheppard) lived at a time when official religious practice in England was going back and forth between Catholicism and Anglican protestantism.  Up until the 1530s, you got burned for owning the gospels translated into English.  In 1585, Margaret Clitherow, who lived in the Shambles in York, was publicly crushed to death for her part in hiding a Jesuit priest.

So when these guys, who were in many cases writing their Latin settings in secret for secret celebrations, set the words dona nobis pacem they must have really been feeling it.  Tallis's setting,  in rich seven part harmony, lacks the agony of Britten's but is equally quiet.  It's scored low in the singers ranges, undulating, and you feel like you're listening to hearts rather than voices.