by
BRENT P. MILLER
 

Advisor - Dr. Douglas Amman

BALL STATE UNIVERSITY
Muncie, Indiana, USA
May 1994
 

INTRODUCTION

 
     "Take him, earth, for cherishing.  To thy tender breast receive him.  Body of a man I bring thee, noble even in its ruin" (Take 2-3).  These words of the poet Prudentius could have been as apt a commitment of Herbert Howells as of John F. Kennedy, for whom Howells set them.  Howells was, by any standard, a noble man, with no quest for greatness, but a love for music and for God.
     Herbert Howells has not yet achieved the recognition he deserves for his vast contribution to the music world.  This becomes apparent when considering the breadth of his output.  In addition to the orchestral, chamber, and solo instrumental works, he composed masses, requiems, service music, hymns, anthems, motets, chants, cantatas and part songs (Hodgson 233-242).  His compositions date from 1908 to 1978, a span of 70 years!
     This tremendous man was a bringing together of the old and new in British musical styles.  The following pages will shed some light on this synthesis.
 

A BIOGRAPHY
 

     On October 17th, 1892, Herbert Norman Howells was born in the small town of Lydney, near Gloucester on the River Severn.  Across the river to the east are the hills of the Cotswold Country, where a young Howells spent much time, gaining inspiration for many of his compositions.  He had a basically happy, although modest, and distinctly musical life in his early years.
     His family was large — Herbert had five older brothers and two sisters.  Herbert's father, Oliver, was a plumber, as was his father, but it is interesting to note that Oliver, too, was a musician.  He was an organist at the Baptist Church in Lydney.  While not particularly successful at his trade, he was a knowledgeable man, and would impart wisdom to Herbert throughout his youth.  Herbert admitted that his father used to awaken him at 5:00 am, to talk of such things as science and history.
     After graduating from "Dame's School" and the Church of England Elementary School, Herbert won a scholarship to the Lydney Grammar School.  During this period, Herbert began to sing as a choirboy and served as an assistant organist in the local Parish Church.  Howells' skills were then beginning to be noticed.  On several occasions, the Vicar at the church would find reason to "require" the services of the head organist as tenor in the choir, thus allowing the far-better organist, Howells, to take his place at the keyboard (Centenary 9-11).
     In 1905, the local Squire, Charles Bathurst, made an incredible offer to Howells.  He was willing to pay for young Herbert to travel weekly to Gloucester and take piano lessons from Herbert Brewer, who was the organist and Master of the Choristers at Gloucester Cathedral.  While Howells did not particularly care for these lessons at first, he did succeed at them, and developed a long-lasting musical relationship with Brewer (Spearing 8).  In 1909, Brewer accepted Howells as an articled pupil at the Cathedral.  This meant that he would not only continue his piano lessons, but would also receive lessons in organ, theory, harmony and counterpoint.
     During this time, Howells also gained his first regular employment as head organist at Aylburton Church in Gloucestershire.  Here he earned the equivalent of about twenty dollars per year.  However, more important than his paid efforts, Howells admitted that the music he heard while at Gloucester Cathedral was life-changing.
     Since around 1724, Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford Cathedrals have hosted, annually in turn, an event known as The Three Choirs Festival.  It was during the Festival in 1907 that Howells first heard George Frideric Handel's Messiah.  Later, during Gloucester's triennial hosting of The Festival in 1910, Howells heard a performance of Sea Drift by Frederick Delius, and the premiere of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for String Orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Howells admitted that these two events helped shape his thinking about music, and encouraged him to continue in his search for beauty in composition (Gaston 4).
     After becoming passive in his studies with Brewer, Howells looked for another avenue to follow his quest.  In 1911, Herbert received a letter from former Gloucester classmate, Ivor Novello.  He had gone to London to study composition with Charles Stanford at the Royal College of Music.  He relayed to Howells the virtues of the school, the city, and, most of all, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.  He conveyed this in such a light that Howells was persuaded to apply for a position at the RCM.  After a year of preparation, Howells submitted a sample of his early scores, and won an open scholarship to the College in 1912.  It was during this time that Howells received his primary education in composition.  He studied music history and literature with Sir Hubert Parry, then Director of the Royal College of Music.  He took lessons in composition with Stanford, lessons in harmony and counterpoint with Charles Wood, lessons in organ performance with Sir Walter Parratt, and studied choral techniques with Sir Walford Davies.
     Of this grand list of masters, Stanford is the one which had the greatest impact on Howells.  While it is true that Stanford eventually called Howells his "son in music," it was deserved.  Howells earned his respect in all his work, winning award after award during his time at the RCM.  Late in 1912, Howells wrote Mass in the Dorian Mode, his first liturgical choral work.  This was an effort made for his lessons with Stanford.  However, it was such a success that it merited a performance by the Westminster Cathedral Choir later that year.
     This was the first of countless honors Howells would receive in his lifetime.  In 1916, Howells received monetary consideration from the Carnegie Trust for his Pianoforte Quartet in A minor, Op. 21, the only chamber work approved by the jurists that year.  The work was later to become the first to be published by the Trust.  This and many other compositions found themselves winning awards for Howells.
     With his efforts not going unnoticed, Howells was offered a position as an organist at Salisbury Cathedral in March, 1917.  However, six months later, he had to abandon the position due to a crushing disability.  Howells had been diagnosed with Graves' Disease (exophthalmic goitre).  While this condition had kept him from having to serve in the British forces during World War I, the condition worsened, and doctors had given Howells six months to live.  Howells was offered the chance to participate in an experimental procedure to cure him, and he accepted.  After two years of travelling weekly to St. Thomas' Hospital for injections of radium, and periods of rest and travel to South Africa and Canada, Howells won the battle, made a full recovery, and lived to be 90.
     During Howells' recovery, he continued to write incessantly, and his works came to the approval of his alma mater, the Royal College of Music.  The RCM offered and Howells accepted a position as teacher of composition.  While he held other positions throughout his life, none would match his contribution to the Royal College, where he taught for 52 consecutive years!
     Howells became the first John Collard Fellow in 1931, and subsequently became the third Collard Life Fellow in 1959.  The previous Life Fellows had been Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams.  In 1936, Howells was appointed as Director of Music at St. Paul's Girls' School in London, a position he held until 1962.  This position had been previously held by Gustav Holst (Trend 206).  In 1937, he received his Doctorate of Music from Oxford University.  Howells became an Honorary Member of The Royal Academy of Music in 1947, an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College of Music in 1956, and in 1963 received an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal School of Church Music in Croyden.
     Howells was also much sought after as an adjudicator, educator and orator.  He presided over such organizations as the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the Plainsong and Mediaeval Society, and the Royal College of Organists.  He was also affilliated with The Worshipful Company of Musicians and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (Hodgson 26-30).
     Throughout his academic life, Howells never was lax in his continuity of composing.  While he wrote many types of music, his choral compositions have stood out as his finest work, continuing in an English tradition, but adding his own spices to the flavor of the genre.
 
 

HIS MUSIC

     Herbert Howells' choral writing was not just a passing fancy of his total compositional output.  In all, he wrote nearly 200 choral works, with nearly three-fourths of them written for the church.  Of these sacred works, he set texts both in English and Latin.  Howells admitted that he had an affinity for ancient writings, and several of his works support this.
     Howells' earliest work for chorus, the Mass in the Dorian Mode, was his entrance piece into the realm of sacred writing.  This academic piece, written in the composer's youth, showed an advanced understanding in the ways of choral technique.  It is scored for mixed chorus, a cappella, and is set in eight movements.  It has two settings of the Agnus Dei, the latter being a canon at the unison.  It was dedicated to Sir Richard Terry of the Westminster Cathedral, where it was given its first performance on November 24th, 1912.  In this work, Howells' use of dynamics are not so subtle, utilizing huge, sudden changes.  Simple, imitative counterpoint is used throughout.
     Howells wrote three carol-anthems in the period 1918 to 1920.  The middle work, A Spotless Rose, is one of his most popular and endearing works.  Scored for a four-part mixed chorus, with baritone solo, it demonstrates Howells' ability to write in a style that shows at once both chant and solo phrase.  The English text is of an anonymous 14th-century writer, and is in three verses.  The first and third verses are sung by the chorus in a mostly homophonic style within a constantly changing meter (Long 429).  The second verse features the soloist, accompanied by the chorus singing a condensed form of the first verse text.  Howells does a masterful job of text painting in this work.  He creates musical images of the wind, light, winter, midnight, sweetness, and the infant Jesus.
     The previously mentioned Three Choirs Festival met in Gloucester in 1922, and, under commission, Howells wrote his fantasy, Sine Nomine, for the occasion.  It is a unique work, scored for orchestra, organ, soprano and tenor soli, and an 8-part chorus.  Originally, the vocal parts were intended to be wordless, but before the first performance of the work, Howells was convinced to add Latin words to the soloists' parts, and instructions for the chorus to sing on the Latin word "ora," meaning "pray."  It is chiefly an orchestral work, but the added colors of the voices and organ create an ethereal tone.  Unfortunately, this beautiful work has gone unperformed for decades, until Gloucester Cathedral again included it in its 1992 Three Choirs Festival, 70 years after its premiere there.
     Howells' Requiem of 1936 shows another stage of development in the harmonic structure of his choral writing.  It is scored for mixed chorus, a cappella, and divides into two choirs of up to 10 parts at some instances.  The manuscript includes an organ part, which, the composer notes, may be used in performance, but only if absolutely necessary.  For personal reasons, Howells did not release the work for performance for 44 years, until 1980.
     This requiem begins with the Salvator Mundi text, in English translation, is followed by the 23rd Psalm, Requiem Aeternam, Psalm 121, another setting of the Requiem Aeternam, and finally, I heard a voice from heaven (Revelation XIV), which incorporates soprano, tenor and baritone soli, and a chorus of six parts.  The scheme of the movements of Howells' requiem was fashioned after a 1915 work, Short Requiem in D Major, in memory of those fallen in the war, by Walford Davies.
     The harmonic complexity of Howells' requiem is advanced, indeed.  His melodies continue to be, as always, very singable lines.  They move from voice part to voice part as smoothly as if they were one voice only.  The surrounding harmonies, however, are masterfully created.  Howells sets a mood with each chord, eliciting an emotional response for each word.  He uses non-harmonic tones in ways which, at once, are both independent from the chord progressions and an integral part of them.  He uses many false cadences and retrograde progressions to leave the sense of key disjunct.  This piece is one of his first to incorporate double choir voicings.  With eight or more parts to utilize, Howells creates polychords with the voices, adding to the sense of absence of any key or tonal center.  He does resolve, though, eventually, but this is delayed to create an even greater buildup of tension before the final release.  In everything, Howells attempts to create his own brand of beauty from within the music, the voices being the key to turning on that beauty.
     In 1935, Howells son, Michael, died of spinal meningitis.  The event greatly troubled Howells, and the music he wrote during those several years following revealed intense emotions.  Howells did not release for publication or performance some of his compositions of that period.  One example of that is his Hymnus Paradisi.
     Hymnus is a kind of requiem, scored much like his Sine Nomine fantasy, this time with a set text, and an even greater harmonic complexity than his previous requiem.  It was completed in 1938, but Howells did not show it to anyone nor release it for performance until 1950.  Ralph Vaughan Williams persuaded Howells to show it to him, and, subsequently, release it for performance at the Three Choirs Festival later that year.
     The work is again set in six movements, beginning with an instrumental prelude, followed by the standard requiem aeternam Latin text and an English setting of the 23rd Psalm.  The fourth movement is a synthesis of the Latin sanctus text and an English setting of Psalm 121.  Fifth is a setting of I heard a voice from heaven, and finally, Howells concludes with a translated text from the burial service of the Salisbury Diurnal, supplemented by the word alleluia, and the expected reprise of the Requiem Aeternam.
     Howells had first envisioned the work for chorus and soloists only, and would borrow the text entirely from the Hymnus Circa Exsequias Defuncti of the poet Prudentius mentioned earlier.  However, in its final form, the only remaining portion of the Prudentius text is found printed alongside the title on the first page of the full score:
 

Nunc suscipe, terra, fovendum,
gremioque hunc concipe molli.
(Take him, earth, for cherishing,
to thy tender breast receive him.)

Howells did not leave these words unused (Study 46-48).
     Howells continued to write much music for the church.  The 1940s and 50s were particularly weighted with Howells' canticles, written for various cathedrals in England.  In all, he wrote at least 20 settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis texts, seven of the Te Deum, three of the Benedictus and two settings of the Jubilate Deo.  In addition, he wrote several smaller sets of Preces and Responses, sequences, settings for communion, hymns and chants for the liturgy (Twentieth 58-59).
     A fine example of his shorter sacred works are his Four Anthems for Chorus and Organ of 1941.  These include O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, a setting of Psalm 122, We Have Heard with Our Ears, from Psalm 44, Like as the Hart Desireth the Waterbrooks, from Psalm 42, and Let God Arise, from Psalm 68.  All four are set for mixed chorus and organ, and each presents a different mood and writing style (Short 92-93).
     In 1955, Howells composed his third setting of the mass, An English Mass.  It was written at the request of Harold Darke at St. Michael's Church at Cornhill, which gave its premiere one year later.  It is scored for mixed chorus, strings and organ.  It shows the craftsmanship of Howells' later writing, but is not too lengthy.  This mass requires very rhythmic singing, and great attention to counting, as the work is permeated with constantly changing meter.  The textures are not so extreme as in his other large-scale works of that time, but the harmonic complexity is just as interesting.
     One of Howells' most challenging and musically complex works is the Stabat Mater.  It is scored for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra.  Howells had been asked by the Bach Choir to write a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra in 1954.  After several years of determining the proper text, he decided upon the 13th-century poem, Stabat Mater.  Howells started composing the work in 1959, and completed it in 1963.  It has seven movements, only loosely connected thematically, and the tenor and chorus serve as eye-witness observers to the crucifixion scene.  The music is as dramatic as the story, revealing all the tensions and emotions therein.
     Howells was asked by Washington, D.C. authorities to write a commemorative piece for the late John F. Kennedy, to be sung at a joint American-Canadian memorial service in 1964, just months after the president's assassination in Texas.  Howells decided to turn once again to the ancient text by Prudentius, Hymnus Circa Exsequias Defuncti.  But Howells used the modern English translation by Helen Waddell, Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing.
     He set this text as an a cappella motet for mixed chorus, in up to eight parts.  After an initial chant-like opening in the key of B minor, the piece turns to free expression to build tension and set up the final section in the relatively-relaxed key of B major, including a return of the initial chant theme.  The chromaticism of this work is a monument to Howells' mature writing style.  It shows a freedom from the harmonic confines of traditional English motet writing that were unmatched in England prior to this, but continues to show a romantic essence in dynamics and in text painting.
     Four years later, in 1968, Howells wrote his last mass.  Composed as a request from Coventry Cathedral, his Coventry Mass is as beautiful and intense as An English Mass, but considerably shorter in duration.  It is simply scored for mixed chorus and organ, and includes the standard six-movement mass texts, plus responses to be sung after the reading of each of the ten biblical commandments, which follows the Kyrie.  Howells uses very thick textures of six- and seven-voice polyphony at times throughout the mass.  This is one of Howells' last large-scale works, composed at the age of 76.

CONCLUSION

     Herbert Howells' music is a fine example of the extent of development of the British choral tradition which began with composers like William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, and which has progressed into the 20th century with as much craftsmanship and beauty in writing as in any other genre.  Hopefully, the music of Howells will continue to be more and more recognized and he will take his place among the choral masters of this century.

WORKS CITED
 

Gaston, Pamela Brooker. "The Solo Songs of Herbert Howells." Diss. University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1988.

Howells, Herbert. Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing. New York: H.W. Gray Co., 1964.

Hodgson, Peter John. The Music of Herbert Howells. Diss. University of Colorado, 1970. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1971. 71-21,593.

Long, Kenneth R. The Music of the English Church. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971.

Palmer, Christopher. Herbert Howells - A Centenary Celebration. London: Thames, 1992.

Palmer, Christopher. Herbert Howells - A Study. Borough Green: Novello, 1978.

Routley, Erik. A Short History of English Church Music. Oxford: Alden Press, 1977.

Routley, Erik. Twentieth Century Church Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Spearing, Robert. A tribute to Herbert Howells on his eightieth birthday. London: Triad Press, 1972.

Trend, Michael. The Music Makers. New York: Schirmer Books, 1985.
 
 

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