Dona Nobis Pacem

I think the music in the video clip at the end of this post is not by Johann Sebastian Bach as the YouTube header indicates, but it is the very version I was hoping to find and share with you today.

Fifty years ago on his weekly, live documentary television show, Wide, Wide World, host Dave Garroway used to end each one of the Sunday-afternoon programs by quoting these lines from Edna St.Vincent Millay’s poem, “Renascence”:

The world stands out on either side,
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.

Then he would raise an arm, fingers pointing up and palm facing outward, in a gesture that looked like he was about to say “How” just like Tonto on The Lone Ranger, but Dave never said “How.” What he always said was “Peace.”

Here, without further commentary from me, is an anonymous, amateur church choir singing a lovely rendition of “Dona Nobis Pacem” (Grant Us Peace).