Rest (1902) is one of the 10 settings of Christina Rossetti Vaughan Williams made over that year and the next, including the famous ‘Silent Noon’. (Four years later, Gustav Holst would set Rossetti’s ‘In the bleak midwinter’.) Rest clearly identifies with the English part-song tradition, though in its harmony it is not readily recognisable as Vaughan Williams. The composer underlines ‘Paradise’ with a bright D major chord but saves the most gentle beauty for the penultimate line, ‘Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be’.

from notes by Edward Bhesania © 2025