For those in the armed services, leaders, businessmen, students, citizens intent on making and preserving the best of this world so that it may be experienced and shared as broadly as possible, I wish the very happiest Fourth of July. I give you for the day, the Augsburg Choir from the Twin Cities singing the grand finale of Ralph Vaughan Williams Materpiece (best choral arrangement of the 20th Century?), entitled “Dona Nobis Pacem,” which Vaughan Williams wrote amidst fears in the mid 1930’s that the world was carreening towards unspeakable violence and death. In our days of potential global economic, terrorist, nationalistic, geopolitical and ethnic violent upheavals, I wish to echo the hope of Ralph Vaughan Williams: Give us peace.
Lyrics:
Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
And none shall make them afraid, neither shall the sword go through their land.
Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them.
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled; and let them ehar, and say, it is the truth.
And it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues.
And they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and they shall decalre my glory among the nations.
For as the new heanvens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain for ever.
Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.
Dona Nobis Pacem
Good-will toward men.
Dona Nobis Pacem
Good-will toward men.
Dona Nobis Pacem
(Lyrics adapteb by Vaughan Williams from Micah 4:3; Leviticus 26:6; Psalms 85:10; Isaiah 43:9 and 66:18-22; and Luke 2:14)
Posted by stevenmaloney 
Posted by stevenmaloney 
