Josef Suk wrote his Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale Saint Wenceslas at the beginning of World War I in August 1914. It came to him as a prayer, a Czech man’s petition for the future of his nation. The composer based the work on the motifs of the 13th century chorale Saint Wenceslas, in which the same petitions to the patron saint of the Czech lands culminate in the words “Do not let death take us, nor those who follow!”. The intimately-styled meditation was originally written for string quartet, and was premiered as such by the Bohemian Quartet on 4 September 1914 in Prague. The composer’s subsequent arrangement for string orchestra was performed at a concert of the Czech Philharmonic in November the same year.