Marc Estrin

WORD OVER ALL

Mar 5, 2006

My 80-something conductor, Robert deCormier, has decided to take a stand against the war(s) — from the podium. The Vermont Symphony Orchestra Chorus is now preparing a concert consisting of Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli (Mass in Time of War), and the Ralph Vaughn Williams Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace).

The former is a work written in 1796, when Napoleon’s armies were invading Austria, and threatening drums were sounding on the outskirts of Vienna. These drums are featured in the mass, especially in the Agnus Dei, calling forth an especially poignant setting of the Dona Nobis Pacem. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi....The “sins of the world”, indeed. 

But it is the Vaughn Williams I want to speak of. The texts of this extraordinary piece are drawn from three sources, the mass’s Dona Nobis Pacem, which frames the five movements, some swords-into-ploughshares biblical texts towards the end, with the bulk of the work devoted to four texts from Leaves of Grass. Whitman, of course, was witness to the barbarities of the Civil War, and spent time on the battlefield, nursing the wounded.

The combination of one particular visionary text with music unbearably beautiful makes it impossible for me to sing this movement. I have not yet been able to control my choking up, so I just have to mouthe the words, and deal judiciously with my tears. (That’s one good thing about the cello. When these kind of moments arise in orchestral playing, you can choke up all you want and still play on.)

Here is Whitman, poem 137, “Reconciliation”: the chorus sings

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 soil’d world...

What confidence Whitman had that the WORD, the WORD over everything, a WORD the size of the sky, must — must! — in time overcome all deeds of carnage, that after much death, and darkest night, the world will be washed clean again — this soil’d world.

The text is set over triplet arpeggios in the strings, quietly washing against the slow four beat pulse. Two against three, three against four — the great Brahmsian secret of the emotional heart, masterfully used, sweetly, caressingly, so affecting in its contrast with the dissonant harmonies of much of the rest.

The “reconciliation” comes as a baritone soloist sings this text

... 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; 

I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

And the chorus returns with “WORD over all...”, this time a capella, so vulnerable, so difficult maintain pitch, to be there, in tune, for the orchestral return... But what a consummate Vaughn Williams gesture — the nakedness of the WORD, the nakedness of us all.

Tears, yes, but finally not healing peace of mind, but, for me, despair. For I realize it is exactly this confidence that is utterly lost. Whitman could attend the wounded and the dead in 1862 and still know that the carnage would — in time — come to an end, that the soil’d world would be washed clean of blood.

But I fear that there is now no hope for remedy, that the WORD has been so clouded by our “words”, so shredded by our weapons, so marginalized by our plans for world domination, and the plans of others to defend against our plans, that the sisters Death and Night have become our permanent landlords, jailers, executioners, and changers of the scene: “That’s all, folks.” 

What a loony tune we — and our children, and theirs — have been launched into when the WORD has been chased from the sky.