Ralph Vaughan Williams: O Taste and See (1952)
Composed in 1952 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey the following year. It is a short piece, less than 2 minutes in length, and it was played during the Queen’s communion. The text is from Psalm 34:8. It was written for a treble solo, accompanied by chorus and organ, unison at first then becoming polyphonic. Ironically, for a man who wrote so much religious music, it must be remembered that Vaughan Williams was first an atheist and later an agnostic.
O taste and see how gracious the Lord is:
blest is the man that trusteth in him.
This work by Froxfield Choir is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. No guarantee of accuracy is given.