In 2005, the Budleigh Salterton Festival of the Arts was launched. The title reflected the aim of including a variety of art forms – from art exhibitions to jazz concerts, drama, but especially classical music.
Inspired by twenty years of successful Budleigh Music Festivals and seeking works which have been influenced by a desire for world peace, one thinks of such works as the ‘Agnus Dei’ with its plea ‘Donna nobis pacem’ by a range of composers, including J.S. Bach in his B minor Mass. Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten and Sir Michael Tippett are among British composers who were inspired to create music inspired by the horrors of the world wars.
Two very well known works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, pictured here, could also be considered. By contrast with Tippett, Vaughan Williams is not known as a pacifist, as is clear from a letter he wrote during WW2, dated 17 December 1941. ‘I will not argue with you about your pacifist scruples which I respect though I think they are all wrong,’ he told Tippett. ‘However wrong & dreadful we think war (and we all do) – here it is & we can’t shirk it – & surely we can all do a little bit to try & bring it to an end.’
His ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ has nonetheless been interpreted by some as having an anti-war sentiment due to its emotional and sometimes dissonant nature. It is true that the original work by Tallis, ‘Why fumeth in fight,’ is a setting of a religious text rather than an anti-war statement in itself. Yet at least one critic has gone even further, claiming that ‘The Lark Ascending’ was written, while the composer was staying with friends in Margate, on a hill overlooking the harbour, as a lament for the troops departing like cattle to be slaughtered in France.
Referring to Vaughan Williams’s earlier, equally famous work, he concludes in an article written for Classic FM: ‘In its historical context, the ‘Tallis Fantasia’, premiered in 1910, is therefore a cry of pain for a world about to tear itself apart on the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme.’ He continues: ‘It could be argued that the whole of his music holds a clear-sighted mirror to the squalid and bloody century that he witnessed, which is not the least reason he became increasingly preoccupied with trying to better that world.’
If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/700424602802079
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