Ralph Vaughan Williams: Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei from Mass in G Minor

The son of a rector and a relative of Charles Darwin, Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958) was arguably the most important composer of his generation, and certainly the most diverse and prolific. Early training on the viola and piano at Charterhouse led to a place at the RCM, where he studied under Stanford and Wood. This was followed by a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge where he read for a B Mus and a degree in History, and then post-graduate study back at the RCM. This was followed by a period abroad and study in Berlin with Bruch and in Paris with Ravel.

Vaughan Williams struggled in his early days and was hampered by bad compositional technique, a fault he recognised and strove hard to overcome. The catalyst for his success was in the realisation that the way forward lay, for him, not in imitating foreign models as Elgar had, but in recycling and reapplying native resources. This led to his fascination with English folk song and early Jacobean music. Like Bartók, he includes native music in much of his original work, and collected over 800 folk songs during his life from all over the British Isles. Surprisingly, given his parentage, his editorship of the English hymnal, (for which he wrote several very popular hymn tunes), his posts as church organist and his writing of sacred music, Vaughan Williams was a professed atheist.

During the first world war he served on the front line in Salonika and was made Director of Music for the British Army Expeditionary Force. Vaughan Wiliams composed in virtually every genre – from film scores to opera, from solo song to huge scale symphonic works, from chamber music to Shakespearean incidental music, from organ music to nationalistic works such as the Fantasias on Greensleeves and The Theme of Thomas Tallis.

The Mass in G Minor for double choir was written over several months between 1920 and 1921. The work was written for a choir directed by Holst, a close friend of Vaughan Williams. The two composers would regularly get together for what they called ‘field days’ – times when they would share their current and usually incomplete work with each another and subject each other to criticism and suggestion. The work is as typically Vaughan Williams as anything he wrote, with its drifting timeless melodies, alternating with fast energetic bursts, and its quintessentially English ecclesiastical feel. The a cappella, imitative writing, often starting with just one voice and building the texture from there, and the modal nature of the harmony, harks back to the masses of Byrd, written at the height of the Jacobean period, and is in what we can label a neo-reformation style.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus sabaoth, Pleni sunt cæli et terra, gloria tua, Osanna in excelsis.	Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, Heaven and Earth are full of Thy glory, Hosanna in the highest.
Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domine, Osanna in excelsis.	Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere mei. Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona nobis pacem.	O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, Grant us Thy peace.