It’s been 244 years since that day in Philadelphia, when we severed our political connection to the mother country. Everyone knows that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4th, 1776.
He also wrote much else for the Continental Congress. The principles he enunciated in the declaration tying natural rights to a transcendent Creator God—”all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”—were expressed in other documents as well, including the “Summary View of the Rights of British America,” in which he wrote: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force can destroy but cannot disjoin them.”
In 1943, Randall Thompson, a music teacher at the University of Virginia, set some of the words of Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia, to music for the occasion of the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth. The piece was called “Testament of Freedom,” and was first performed by the Virginia Glee Club, under the direction of Stephen Tuttle, on April 13, 1943, the 200th Anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. Thompson accompanied on the piano.
The piece is in four movements, the first of which, “The God who gave us Life gave us liberty,” is the most famous. The second and third movements are from the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms,” written in 1775, and the fourth is from a personal letter to his lifelong friend and sometime adversary, John Adams, written less than five years before they both died 50 years to the day after signing the Declaration of Independence.
First movement
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.
Second movement
We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great… We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that His Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
—Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775)
Third movement
We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.
In our native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves; against violence actually offered; we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.
—Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775)
Fourth movement
I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance... And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them [remarkably prophetic, given the U.S.’s role in WWII] ...The flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
—Letter to John Adams, Monticello (September 12, 1821)
Here is the first, and most famous movement, sung by the United States Army Chorus and the Turtle Creek (Dallas) Chorale:
Randall Thompson's TESTAMENT OF FREEDOM (first movement) Turtle Creek Chorale joined by the US Army Chorus and Dallas Wind Symphony
All four movements are performed here, by the Southern Utah University department of music:
Bonus video: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” narrated by one of Lincoln’s many celluloid pretenders, Gregory Peck:
“Lincoln Portrait,” by Aaron Copland, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and narrated by American actor Gregory Peck. The image ed...
Okay, one more bonus video. Also by Randall Thompson, “The Last Words of David”
“The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.” 2 Samuel 23:3-4
Atlanta Master Chorale | The Last Words of David (R. Thompson) | Saturday, May 4, 2019 | Conductor: Dr. Eric Nelson | Accompanist: Jonathan East...