29 December 2015

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (6):
‘Hodie’, 7, 8 and 9: Song, Narration, Pastoral

Trinity College, Cambridge, in the winter snow... both George Herbert, whose poetry is part of ‘Hodie,’ and Vaughan Williams were students here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning [29 December 2015], I invite you to join me in listening to the seventh, eighth and ninth movements of Hodie, which are inspired by poems by Thomas Hardy and George Herbert, interspersed with a short reading from Saint Luke’s account of the Christmas story.

7, 8, 9: Song, Narration, Pastoral



7, Song:

This movement features the baritone soloist, and is introduced by quiet and atmospheric woodwinds. The text is ‘The Oxen’ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928):

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

The poem ‘The Oxen’ was by Thomas Hardy in 1915, at the height of World War I and in this short poem he encapsulates the urge to faith that persists even in the face of all better judgment.

Hardy was familiar with the legend that cattle would kneel at midnight on Christmas Eve, and he had drawn on this legend many years earlier in Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). When Tess arrives at Talbothays looking for work as a milkmaid, Dairyman Crick tells her the story of William Dewy, who was walking home to Mellstock late at night after a wedding. Crossing a field, he is chased by a bull, but tricks the bull by breaking into song with a Christmas carol. “William used to say that he’d seen a man look a fool a good many times, but never such a fool as that bull looked when he found his pious feelings had been played upon.”

When he was writing his last symphony, the Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-1957), Vaughan Williams’s intended to create a programmatic symphony based on Tess of the d’Urbervilles, although the programmatic elements eventually disappeared as his work on the composition progressed.

8, Narration:

The eighth movement of Hodie is a narration using a single verse from the Nativity narration in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 20):

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God
for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was
told unto them.

“Glory to God in the highest.”

9, Pastoral:

This song is again scored for the baritone soloist, and is a setting of a poem by George Herbert:

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for Thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace
Enriching all the place.

Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Outsing the daylight hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I find a sun
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipped suns look sadly.

Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n His beams sing, and my music shine.

This is the second part of the poem ‘Christmas’ by George Herbert (1593-1633), which comes from his collection, The Temple, edited and published by Nicholas Ferrar after Herbert’s death.

George Herbert is remembered for carefully and pastorally nurturing of his parish and his parishioners, and for his poetry, much of which has been adapted as hymns. His spirituality is the Anglican Via Media or Middle Way par excellence, which his poetry provides constant evidence of the intimacy of his dealings with God and his assurance that, alone in a vast universe, he is held safe by the Crucified Christ.

George Herbert was born in Wales but is generally regarded as an English poet. His mother was a patron and friend of John Donne and other poets, while his older brother, Edward Herbert (later Lord Herbert of Cherbury), was an important poet and philosopher. From Westminster School, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA and MA and was elected a fellow. In 1618 he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric in Cambridge and in 1620 he was elected to Cambridge University orator, a position until 1628.

As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert intended becoming a priest, but he came the attention of King James I, and served at the royal court and for two years in Parliament as the MP for Montgomery in Wales.

Herbert gave up his secular ambitions in 1630, at the age of 37, and was ordained in the Church of England. He spent the rest of his life as the Rector of Fugglestone Saint Peter with Bemerton Saint Andrew, a rural parish in Wiltshire, near Salisbury.

George Herbert was known for his unfailing pastoral care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan described him as “a most glorious saint and seer.”

Throughout his life, he wrote religious poems that were characterised by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets.

In a letter to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, Herbert described his writings as “a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master.”

In 1633, shortly before his death, Herbert finished The Temple, a collection of poems that imitates the architectural style of churches through the meaning of words and their visual layout.

Some of his poems survive as hymns, including as “King of Glory, King of Peace,” “Let all the world in every corner sing,” and “Teach me, my God and King.”

Herbert died of tuberculosis only three years after his ordination. On his deathbed, he gave the manuscript of The Temple to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding – the community that later inspired TS Eliot – telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul,” but otherwise to burn them.

George Herbert … his poems were collected and published in ‘The Temple’ after his death, and many continue to be used as hymns

Herbert’s poems were published subsequently in The Temple: Sacred poems and private ejaculations, edited by Nicholas Ferrar. These poems are religious, some continue to be used as hymns, and many have intricate rhyme schemes, with variations of lines within stanzas described as “a cascade of form floats through the temple.”

Herbert also wrote A Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson), offering practical pastoral advice to priests. He tells them, for example, that “things of ordinary use,” such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to “serve for lights even of Heavenly Truths.”

Richard Baxter later said: “Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books.”

Although George Herbert died on 1 March 1633, he is remembered in Church calendars throughout the Anglican Communion on 27 February. Herbert influenced the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, and he in turn influenced William Wordsworth. Herbert’s poetry has been set to music by Vaughan Williams and many other composers, including Benjamin Britten, Randall Thompson and William Walton.

George Herbert ... the poem Christmas is included in his collection, ‘The Temple’

Christmas (I)

All after pleasures as I rid one day,
My horse and I, both tir’d, bodie and minde,
With full crie of affections, quite astray,
I took up in the next inne I could finde,

There when I came, whom found I but my deare,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there
To be all passengers most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night’s mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,
To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger:

Furnish & deck my soul, that thou mayst have
A better lodging then a rack or grave.

Christmas (II)

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.

The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light houres.

Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I finde a sunne
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.

Then we will sing, shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n his beams sing, and my musick shine.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Crossing a bridge that recalls stories
of bigamy, kidnap, slavery and murder

Crossing Annesley Bridge yesterday brought back memories of old stories of abduction, bigamy and murder (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

On my way back from the Bull Wall and Dollymount after a stroll along the North Wall and Dollymount Strand yesterday, I was reminded of an old story as I crossed Annesley Bridge over the River Tolka just sout-west of Fairview Park in Dublin.

The East Wall Road, North Strand Road and Poplar Row meet at the west end of the bridge, with Annesley Bridge Road at the east end, making it an important junction in the north inner city.

The bridge was first built in 1797, when it was named after the Hon Richard Annesley. The name was retained when Annesley Bridge was rebuilt in 1926.

Richard Annesley (1745-1824) was a Commissioner of Irish Excise (1786-1795), Irish Customs (1802-1806) and director of the Royal Canal Company, making him an important figure in the commercial and civic life of Dublin at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.

He was an MP in the Irish House of Commons until the Act of Union, for Coleraine (1776-1783), the constituency of Saint Canice or Irishtown in Kilkenny (1783-1790), Newtownards (1790-1798), Fore (1798), Blessington (1798-1800), Clogher (1800), and finally for Midleton (1800-1801). The loss of his Irish constituency had little effect on his political career, for when his childless elder brother died in 1802, Richard Annesley succeeded him as 2nd Earl Annesley and 3rd Viscount Glerawly.

But Richard Annesley’s success was in was a sharp contrast to the life of his contemporary and namesake, his second cousin Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey (1693-1761).

Crossing Annesley Bridge on Sunday afternoon jolted my memory. I was brought back to my most recent visit to Bunclody, Co Wexford, and recalled the story of Richard’s dissolute life that I may have first heard in my childhood, and that I first told in a feature on the River Slaney in The Irish Times over 35 years ago [27 July 1980].

This second Richard Annesley was known as Lord Altham from 1727 to 1737, and was Governor of Wexford. But he is remembered for a famous story of child abduction, kidnapping and conspiracy that surrounded the doubts about his claims to the title of Lord Altham, and the questions about legitimacy of his marriages.

It is a story of attempted murder, the suspicious killing of a supposed poacher, multiple and bigamous marriages, a penniless heir who ended up as an urchin on the streets of Dublin, a punch-up at the Curragh racecourse, and the kidnap of a former schoolboy in Bunclody whose whirlwind life ended up in almost every court in both Ireland and England.

The story of the abducted heir and his later escape from slavery in the North Americans colonies to the West Indies inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.

Late at night, I found myself re-reading the court cases, trial transcripts and contemporary reports from the 18th century. It is a tale far more gripping than the classic novel it inspired, and I resolved to write about it in greater detail in my column in the Church Review and the Diocesan Magazine early in the New Year.

Richard Annesley (1745-1824) gave his name to a bridge … but his cousin Richard Annesley (1690-1761) was involved in some of the greatest scandals of the 18th century