Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote on VW's atheism:

>He identified very strongly with a culture that had deep Christian roots,
>particularly as far as musical traditions and venues were concerned.
>Also Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress had, during VW's formative years, become
>a major text of British Socialism.  A friend of his once described him as
>a "cheerful Christian agnostic." I have no evidence for what I'm about to
>say, but I do get the feeling that he had much in common with Hardy's view
>of man and the universe, although not as unrelentingly "down" as Hardy.
>Hardy was a major artistic resource (as was Whitman) throughout his life.
>Neither one was squarely within the Anglican Christian tradition.

I am tempted to agree.  RVW wrote some "religious" works, but I can't see
that in any of those I know his point is to express any personal (or even
universal) praise for Christianity.

"Bendeictine" for example although staing "One in Three and Three in One"
(fron "Hark, my Lord") recapitulates with summing up praise for God as
a manifestation through the metrological powers, as a sort of Pantheism.
Listen how the instruments colours play with each others to illustrate
the doxology of Night & Day/ Light & Darkness.  The several ideas that are
presented, which are labelled "The Waters", "The Winds", "The Nights" and
so on, I can't think are portrayed with any literal style worthy of a work
with ambition to belong to how works praising Christianity traditionally
are modelled.  RVWs "Magnificat" bears the same spirit, with alludings to
among others "Saturn" in "The Planets".

I would even dare to say that even his "Dona Nobis Pacem" could fall on
it.  I am referring to the partial settings of Whitman, mainly the second
movement, and the second part of the fourth movement.  I notice that RVW
"cycle" the pantheist Whitman with a frame of Biblesources, beginning with
"Agnus Dei" and in the last movement again tying back to John Bright and
the Bible.  And then of course there was one bold-headstrong critic who
claimed that RWVs "Dona Nobis Pacem" is neither religious nor even
artistic, as little as "The Trojan Women" was that, as Euripides, like
RVW, was preeching - or propaganding - in it a sermon against war.

Mats Norrman
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