Christmas with Vaughan Williams (10): ‘Hodie’, 15 and 16: Choral and Epilogue

‘Never since the world began / Such a light such dark did span’ … Lichfield Cathedral at night during this Christmas season (Photograph: John Godley, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I have been 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).

In this cantata, Vaughan Williams draws 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 [1 January 2016], we come to the end of this cantata, with the two closing movements, a second choral and the Epilogue.

15 and 16: Choral and Epilogue



15, Choral:

The text of the second choral, again for an unaccompanied chorus, is heart-achingly beautiful and is in two parts. The first verse is from an anonymous poem, while the second verse again was furnished by the composer’s second wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007), who was already established as a poet when they married:

No sad thought his soul affright,
Sleep it is that maketh night;
Let no murmur nor rude wind
To his slumbers prove unkind:
But a quire of angels make
His dreams of heaven, and let him wake
To as many joys as can
In this world befall a man.

Promise fills the sky with light,
Stars and angels dance in flight;
Joy of heaven shall now unbind
Chains of evil from mankind,
Love and joy their power shall break,
And for a new born prince’s sake;
Never since the world began
Such a light such dark did span.

16, Epilogue

The epilogue opens with a setting, for the three soloists, of a text adapted from two Gospel passages, John 1: 1, 4, and 14, and Matthew 1: 23:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. In him was life; and the life was the
light of men. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth. Emmanuel, God with us.

The chorus joins in on the final words, and the remainder of the work is scored for full chorus and orchestra, with soloists. It again sets a fragment of the poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ one of the earliest poems by John Milton (1608-1674), written while he was a 21-year-old at Christ’s College, Cambridge:

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,

If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of the morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,

And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Yea, truth and justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

Yesterday’s reflection

Tomorrow: ‘The truth sent from above’.

2016 comes in with a roar and ‘the deep sea swell’

2016 came in with a roar at Rush Harbour, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

— TS Eliot, ‘Death by Water’ ( The Waste Land)

‘Death by Water’ is the shortest section of TS Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, yet its short ten lines comprise the most organised and structured of the five sections of the poem. Here the language is formal and structured, as if it were a parable with old, wise truths about pride that is being retold.

These 10 lines tell the tale of Phlebas the Phoenician, who was killed by water and has been dead for two weeks.

When Eliot says that the dead Phlebas “Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss,” he suggests that the now-dead Phlebas no longer worries about worldly things such as banking and money-making.

But he is dead far longer than a fortnight, for his dead bones get picked clean by a current under the sea. As he entered the whirlpool, his whole life seemed to pass before him, from his youth through to this adult years. Perhaps he is trying to make sense of his life only after to find it is too late to do anything about it.

Is it only when we find ourselves on the edge or on the brink of death that we finally take stock of our lives and think deeply about the meaning of life? Is it only then that we find how shallow we have been?

Phlebas, “who was once handsome and tall as you” is a cautionary figure for anyone who walks around thinking I am awesome and unsinkable.

‘The cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell’ … darkness falls on the sea swell in Rush this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

New Year’s Day is a good day to realise how we all stand on the edge, on the brink, and to take stock of the life that has passed before us, to make sense of it, and to realise that we all stand on the brink.

These thoughts came to mind this afternoon as I stood on the pier in Rush in north Co Dublin and looked windward, watching the waves from the south-east break against the seawall of the small fishing harbour and against the tiny cove of the beach. It was my first beach walk of the New Year.

There is an old proverb about March that says: “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” Of course, when March starts it is still winter, and by the end of the month spring has begun.

But 2016 has come in like a lion this good year, and there is no prospect of the winter storms being tamed over the next few days.

There was no sunset to see this evening, and darkness fell suddenly on Rush before we left and drove on towards Skerries. There, the tide was in at the harbour, and although the harbour waters looked deceptively calm, it was soon clear that this was merely a deceit in the dark. On the other side of Red Island, the stormy waves were battering the South Strand, and even in the dark evening, looking out to sea, it was possible to see the white foam of the waves for long stretches.

High tide and the swollen sea in Skerries this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)