I Vow to Thee, My Country explained

I Vow to Thee, My Country
Genre:Hymn
Text:Cecil Spring Rice
Written:1921
Meter:13.13.13.13 D

"I Vow to Thee, My Country" is a British patriotic hymn, created in 1921 when music by Gustav Holst had a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice set to it. The music originated as a wordless melody, which Holst later named "Thaxted", taken from the "Jupiter" movement of Holst's 1917 suite The Planets.

History

The origin of the hymn's text is a poem by diplomat Sir Cecil Spring Rice, written in 1908 or 1912, entitled "Latin: Urbs Dei ("The City of God") or "The Two Fatherlands". The poem describes how a Christian owes his loyalties to his homeland and the heavenly kingdom.

In 1908, Spring Rice was posted to the British Embassy in Stockholm. In 1912, he was appointed as Ambassador to the United States of America, where he influenced the administration of Woodrow Wilson to abandon neutrality and join Britain in the war against Germany. After the United States entered the war, he was recalled to Britain. Shortly before he departed from the US in January 1918, he rewrote and renamed "Latin: Urbs Dei, significantly altering the first verse to concentrate on the themes of love and sacrifice rather than "the noise of battle" and "the thunder of her guns", creating a more sombre tone because of the loss of life suffered in the Great War. The first verse in both versions invokes Britain (in the 1912 version, anthropomorphised as Britannia with sword and shield; in the second version, simply called "my country"); the second verse, the Kingdom of Heaven.

According to Sir Cecil's granddaughter, the rewritten verse of 1918 was never intended to appear alongside the first verse of the original poem but was replacing it; the original first verse is nevertheless sometimes known as the "rarely sung middle verse".[1] The text of the original poem was sent by Spring Rice to William Jennings Bryan in a letter shortly before his death in February 1918.[2]

The poem circulated privately for a few years until it was set to music by Holst, to a tune he adapted from his Jupiter to fit the poem's words. It was performed as a unison song with orchestra in the early 1920s, and it was finally published as a hymn in 1925/6 in the Songs of Praise hymnal (no. 188).[3]

It was included in later hymnals, including:[4]

Publication Year No.
Songs of praise: enlarged edition 1931319
Methodist Hymn Book 1933900
Songs of Praise for America193843
The Book of Common Praise: being the hymn book of The Church of England in Canada1939805
Hymns Ancient & Modern, Revised1950579
Songs of Praise for Schools195749
Church Hymnal, Fourth Edition 1960 312
Hymns Ancient & Modern, New Standard Edition1983295
Common Praise: A new edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern2000 355
Church Hymnary (4th ed.)2005704

Tune

See main article: Thaxted (tune).

In 1921, Gustav Holst adapted the music from a section of Jupiter from his suite The Planets to create a setting for the poem. The music was extended slightly to fit the final two lines of the first verse. At the request of the publisher Curwen, Holst made a version as a unison song with orchestra (Curwen also published Sir Hubert Parry's unison song with orchestra, "Jerusalem"). This was probably first performed in 1921 and became a common element at Armistice memorial ceremonies, especially after it was published as a hymn in 1926.[5]

In 1926, Holst harmonised the tune to make it usable as a hymn, which was included in the hymnal Songs of Praise.[6] In that version, the lyrics were unchanged, but the tune was then called "Thaxted" (named after the village where Holst lived for many years). The editor of the new (1926) edition of Songs of Praise was Holst's close friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, which may have provided the stimulus for Holst's cooperation in producing the hymn. Vaughan Williams himself composed an alternative tune to the words, Abinger, which was included in the enlarged edition of Songs of Praise but is very rarely used.[7]

Holst's daughter Imogen recorded that, at "the time when he was asked to set these words to music, Holst was so over-worked and over-weary that he felt relieved to discover they 'fitted' the tune from Jupiter".[8]

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Lyrics

The hymn as printed in Songs of Praise (1925) consisted only of the two stanzas of the 1918 version, credited "Words: Cecil Spring-Rice, 1918; Music: Thaxted", as follows:[9]

The final line of the second stanza is based on Proverbs KJV, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace" (KJV), in the context of which the feminine pronoun refers to Wisdom.

The original first stanza of Spring-Rice's poem "Urbs Dei/"The Two Father Lands" (1908–1912), never set to music, was as follows:[10]

Contemporary use

First performed in 1921, it is still associated with Remembrance Day services all over the Commonwealth of Nations.[11] The hymn was used at the funeral of Winston Churchill in 1965. Diana, Princess of Wales, requested that the hymn be sung at her wedding to Prince Charles in 1981, saying that it had "always been a favourite since schooldays". It was also sung at her funeral in 1997 and her tenth-year memorial service in 2007.[12] It was sung at the funeral of Baroness Thatcher on 17 April 2013.[13] Similarly, it was used both at the Funeral of Elizabeth II[14] in 2022 and at the Coronation of Charles III[15] in 2023. Julian Mitchell's 1981 play Another Country and its 1984 film version derive their titles from the words of the second stanza.[16]

Reception

In August 2004, Stephen Lowe, Bishop of Hulme criticised the hymn in a diocese newsletter, calling it "heretical" because of its nationalist overtones.[17]

In 2013, an Anglican vicar said that the hymn could be regarded as "obscene" for misrepresenting the teachings of Christ and urging on unquestioning obedience when asked to kill other human beings.[18]

"I Vow to Thee, My Country" was voted as the UK's sixth favourite hymn in a 2019 poll by the BBC's Songs of Praise.[19]

External links

Libera Official, 2014

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Cecil Spring-Rice: Singing the Unsung Hero . . 4 June 2013 . 22 November 2013 .
  2. Bernard Simon, This memorial is poetic justice for Sir Cecil Spring-Rice The Telegraph, 31 May 2013.Mark Browse, O Little Town: Hymn-tunes and the places that inspired them (2015), p. 69.
  3. Web site: Treasure No 47: I Vow To Thee My Country . Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland . 6 April 2021.
  4. Web site: I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above (editions cited after Harry Plantinga) . hymnary.org . 9 March 2022.
  5. Web site: I Vow to Thee, My Country . G4 Central . 31 August 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070929062038/http://www.g4central.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=61 . 29 September 2007 . dead .
  6. Vaughan Williams & Shaw, Songs of Praise, Oxford University Press 1926
  7. Web site: Can ‘I vow to thee’ be renovated? . 2024-04-20 . www.churchtimes.co.uk.
  8. Book: Holst, Imogen . A Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst's Music . Faber . 1974 . 145 .
  9. Songs of Praise (1925), no. 188; c.f. oremus.org (online transcription)
  10. published in 1929 in The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice (p. 433).
  11. News: The sound of silence . . 14 November 2005 . 20 April 2007 .
  12. Web site: I vow to thee, my Country . 15 March 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120731095750/http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/i/v/o/ivow2the.htm . 31 July 2012 . live .
  13. News: What time is Margaret Thatcher's funeral? Guest list, date, cost, travel and all the details . 16 April 2013 . .
  14. Web site: The Queen's Funeral: what music was played at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II? . 2024-06-08 . www.classical-music.com . en.
  15. Web site: King Charles III Coronation Order of Service . 2024-06-08 . www.classical-music.com . en.
  16. Book: Childs. Peter. Texts: Contemporary Cultural Texts and Critical Approaches: Contemporary Cultural Texts and Critical Approaches. 2006. Edinburgh University Press. 9780748629183. 101. 3 August 2017. en.
  17. "According to the Daily Telegraph, Bishop Lowe claimed the rise in English nationalism had parallels "with the rise of Nazism. Later, he told Sky News that the paper had misreported him when it said he had called for the hymn to be banned. [...] A spokesman for the Church of England said the bishop was entitled to his own opinions."Mark Oliver, Hymn has racist overtones, says bishop, The Guardian 12 August 2004. Gerry Hanson, Patriotism and sacrifice. The Diocese of Oxford Reporter, 28 September 2004.News: Today programme . Today programme . I Vow To Thee My Country . . 13 August 2004 . 31 August 2007 . News: Gerry . Hanson . Patriotism and Sacrifice . 28 September 2004 . Diocese of Oxford Reporter . 1 September 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070708194033/http://oxford.anglican.org/page/1258 . 8 July 2007 . dead . dmy-all .
  18. Web site: Jessica Elgot . 'I Vow To Thee My Country' Could Be 'Obscene', Says Church of England Vicar Gordon Giles . The Huffington Post . 2013-11-10 . 2017-03-11.
  19. News: World War One hymn is nation's favourite. BBC News. 29 September 2019. 24 April 2021.