ABSTRACT
Rubbra's very first opus was on a religious poem of R. G. S. Mead, The Secret Hymnody, scored for full orchestra, chorus, and organ. In fact, the work's final form was the result of a commission from the Musicians' Benevolent Fund for the first St. Cecilia's Day Festival at the Royal Albert Hall, where it was performed on 22 November 1946. One of Vaughan's finest poems, The Morning Watch is devotional in nature, its central inspiration in certain religious ideas that were for the poet associated with night and daybreak. Rubbra observed the form of this two-part structure, but enclosed it within a protracted orchestral prelude "Slow and spacious" is the indication at the start and a briefer postlude. The latter Vaughan's poetic language, with its skillful enjambment between long and short lines, which are crossed with, and subordinate to, fluent speech rhythms and constructions, aiding the sustained flow of the lyric could be compared to Rubbra's compositional idiom.
