Prayer to the Father of Heaven

In this unaccompanied motet Vaughan Williams sets a text by the English poet John Skelton (c.1463-1529). The music captures the spirituality of the text with floating choral lines and a sophisticated harmonic language, employing eerie dissonances to create a sense of otherworldliness. The work carries the following dedication: 'To the memory of my master Hubert Parry not as an attempt palely to reflect his incomparable art, but in the hope that he would have found in this motet (to use his own words) 'something characteristic'.'.