On May 8, 1945, 80 years ago, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower announced the German surrender that ended World War II in Europe. Five days later, on May 13, the British Broadcasting Corporation presented “Hymn to Victory” by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

This 15-minute composition for soprano, orchestra and chorus is a hymn to that victory and a hymn to English culture: the King James Bible; Shakespeare’s Henry V (“O God, thy arm was here”); and a girls’ chorus singing Rudyard Kipling’s “Land of our Birth.” The hymn has some cymbals and calls for a soprano with “a powerful dramatic voice.” But it is written with taste and restraint — especially the ending, where we might expect some triumphal bombast. For the last 33 seconds, we hear only the soprano and the solo trumpet motif that also opens the piece. The soloist sings from the 60th chapter of Isaiah.

The Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.

That is: no soaring music at all at the end of the war that had killed 398,000 of Vaughan Williams’ countrymen and 292,000 of our own countrymen (including the Pacific Theater). And we must admit that for those who loved those dead, mourning did not end. At an English cemetery in Normandy the visitor reads on the gravestone of a 17-year-old: “Into the mosaic of victory, our most precious piece was laid.”

Vaughan Williams’ friend and scholar, Michel Kennedy, offers this accurate summary in his book, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: “There is no gloating in this music, only a sense of thankfulness and a quiet determination to build wisely in the future.”

Now the creation of “Hymn to Victory” had its own inspirations and its own stumbles.

In December 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin met in Tehran. The big result of their summit was agreement that their Allied armies would invade France in May 1944.

This put a certain spotlight on Vaughan Williams. “About the end of 1943,” he wrote to the BBC’s Victor Hutchinson in 1945, “I had a letter from Arthur Bliss asking me to write a ‘Victory Anthem’ to be ready to put on at a moment’s notice if victory suddenly came upon us.”

Hutchinson was Bliss’s 1944 successor as the BBC’s director of music. Bliss and the composer were very old friends, but that 1943 letter was actually from earlier BBC music director Adrian Boult and written in August – even before Tehran – not at the end of 1943.

It’s inspiring to think that in 1943 Boult and his colleagues foresaw victory. But when Boult wrote that letter, triumph was not nearly ‘’upon us.” Stalin’s armies had stopped the German invasion of Russia. But Normandy, France, the Rhine and the Bulge loomed between that year and Gen. Eisenhower’s announcement.

Indeed, the victory anthem was set aside until that successful Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944. “About June 1944,” the composer wrote to Hutchinson, “I had an agitated phone call from Adrian Boult.” Boult asked, “How about that victory anthem? It may be wanted at any minute, so please get to work.” Vaughan Williams wrote that he had replied, “You’ve already had it for nearly six months.”

The Hutchinson letter went on: “So a hue and cry was made, and it was, I believe, found forgotten in a drawer.”

The final product of the BBC’s foresight, and the BBC’s agitated hue and cry, is “Hymn to Victory.”

With Boult conducting, the BBC Orchestra recorded it Nov. 5, 1944. The May 13, 1945, premiere broadcast was part of a National Thanksgiving Service, and it is with us today as we note the 80th anniversary of the war’s end in Europe.

It may be too much to say that Boult’s foresight was that of free men confident that they would defeat the tyrant. In fact, once the American president committed to the invasion of France, it was not confidence that was needed, but patience, patience to wait for the army that, 11 months after that invasion, would demand unconditional surrender. Hence Boult’s sudden “agitation” right after the Allies secured the Normandy beaches.

Once Boult went to that forgotten drawer, “Hymn to Victory” became pkt of the legacy of thought and excellence that the mosaic of victory, dearly bought, preserved for us.

This piece benefitted from research graciously offered by Hilary Richardson, interim dean of library services at Mississippi University for Women. “Hymn to Victory” with Adrian Boult conducting in 1951 is available as a Dutton CD: CDBP 9703.

Hazard, a former city editor of The Dispatch, is an occasional contributor.

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