Herbert Howells
Encyclopedia
Herbert Norman Howells CH
(17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983) was an English composer
, organist
, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music
.
, Gloucestershire
, the youngest of the six children of Oliver Howells, a plumber, painter, decorator and builder, and his wife Elizabeth. His father played the organ at the local Baptist church, and Herbert himself showed early musical promise, first deputising for his father, and then moving at the age of eleven to the local Church of England
parish church as choirboy and unofficial deputy organist. The Howells family's financial position was always precarious and at some point in Howells' adolescence his father became bankrupt, a deep humiliation in a small community at the time and one from which Howells never fully recovered. Financially assisted by a member of the family of Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe
who had taken an interest in the budding musician, Howells began music lessons in 1905 with Herbert Brewer
, the organist of Gloucester Cathedral
, and at sixteen became his articled pupil
at the Cathedral alongside Ivor Novello
and Ivor Gurney
. The latter became a close friend, the pair going on long walks through the Gloucestershire countryside discussing their shared love of music and English literature. Another formative experience for the young Howells was the premiere in September 1910 at the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival
of Ralph Vaughan Williams
' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
. Howells liked to relate in after years how Vaughan Williams sat next to him for the remainder of the concert and shared his score of Edward Elgar
's The Dream of Gerontius
with the awestruck aspiring composer. Both Vaughan Williams and the Tudor composers of which Tallis was one profoundly influenced Howells' later work.
In 1912, following the example of Ivor Gurney, Howells moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music. Here his teachers included Charles Villiers Stanford
, Hubert Parry
and Charles Wood
. Among Howells' contemporaries in the student body were Gurney, Arthur Bliss
and Arthur Benjamin
. Howells blossomed in what he considered the "cosy family" atmosphere of the College and his Mass in the Dorian Mode was performed at Westminster Cathedral
under R.R. Terry
within weeks of his arrival. For the most part however his music at this time was orchestral; works included a piano concerto, withdrawn after its first performance, a light orchestral suite, The B's, portraying his friends at the college, and the Three Dances for violin and orchestra. More typical of the works with which Howells was later to be associated were his earliest important compositions for organ, the first set of Psalm Preludes (1915-16) and the first of the op. 17 Rhapsodies.
Howells' promise seemed likely to be cut short in 1915 when he was diagnosed with Graves' disease
and given six months to live. His poor health prevented him from being called to the Front in World War I, arguably preserving him from the worse fate awaiting Gurney and others of his friends and contemporaries. At St Thomas' Hospital
he was given the previously untried treatment of radium
injections in the neck, administered twice a week over a period of two years. For much of this time Howells travelled between London for treatment and Lydney where he was nursed by his mother. He was nonetheless still able to compose and in 1916 produced the first work of his maturity. The Piano Quartet in A minor, dedicated to "the hill at Chosen and Ivor Gurney who knows it" was in the following year one of the first works published under the auspices of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust
. In the following year Howells became assistant organist at Salisbury Cathedral
, but only held the post for a few months, finding the repeated journeys to London for treatment too difficult. Friends then arranged for a grant from the Carnegie Trust, which paid for Howells to assist R.R. Terry in editing the voluminous Latin Tudor repertoire that Terry and his choir were reviving at Westminster Cathedral
. The work provided Howells with a comfortable income and enabled him to absorb the English Renaissance style which he loved and would evoke in his own music. His first significant works for choir, the Three Carol Anthems (Here is the Little Door, A Spotless Rose and Sing Lullaby) were written around this time.
In 1920 Howells married Dorothy Dawe (1891 – 1975), a singer whom he had met in 1911 when deputizing as her accompanist. The marriage endured despite Howells' frequent infidelities, and produced two children, Ursula
(1922 – 2005), later an actress, and Michael (1926 – 1935).
In the same year he joined the staff of the Royal College of Music, where he was to remain until 1979. Among his pupils were Robert Simpson
, Gordon Jacob
, Paul Spicer
and Imogen Holst
. The post at the RCM, which from 1925 he combined with the position of Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School
, and frequent work as a competition adjudicator, was to reduce the amount of time he could devote to composition, but he continued to write orchestral and chamber music, including the string quartet In Gloucestershire (originally written 1916, but rewritten in whole or in part several times and not reaching its final form until the 1930s), the overture Merry Eye (1920) and the second Piano Concerto (1925). The first performance of the last named work occasioned a demonstration in the concert hall from a hostile critic. Howells, always over-sensitive to criticism, withdrew the work and produced few significant compositions for several years. One exception was Lambert's Clavichord
(1928), one of the few compositions by a twentieth-century composer for that instrument. It was inspired by a clavichord lent to Howells by his friend Herbert Lambert, an instrument maker and photographer based in Bath
. Several other major compositions written around this time however remained unperformed, notably an a capella Requiem
to English words written in 1932, and a choral work, A Kent Yeoman's Wooing Song, written the following year.
In September 1935 Howells' placid existence as teacher, adjudicator and occasional composer was abruptly shattered when his nine-year-old son Michael contracted polio
during a family holiday, dying in London three days later. Howells was deeply affected and continued to commemorate the event until the end of his life. At the suggestion of his daughter Ursula he sought to channel his grief into music, and over the next three years composed much of the large-scale choral work which was eventually to become Hymnus Paradisi, drawing on material from the unpublished Requiem of 1932. This remained, in Howells' words, "a personal, almost secret document" until 1950. Other commemorative works written around this time include the slow movement of the Concerto for Strings (in joint memory of Michael and Edward Elgar
), the hymn tune Michael (to the words "All My Hope on God is Founded" by Robert Bridges
) and the unfinished Cello Concerto, on which Howells had been working at the time of the boy's death and which he found himself unable to complete. To a greater or lesser extent, however, much of Howells' subsequent music shows the influence of this loss.
From the late 1930s Howells turned increasingly to choral and organ music, composing a second series of Psalm Preludes followed by a set of Six Pieces (begun 1939), of which the third, Master Tallis's Testament, a particular favorite of the composer's, recalled his formative experience of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia. A set of Four Anthems, originally titled In Time of War and including the popular O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem and Like as the Hart, followed in early 1941. In August of that year, Howells was invited to serve as acting organist of St John's College, Cambridge
, replacing Robin Orr
who was away on active service in World War II
. Howells' association with Cambridge, which lasted until the end of the war in 1945, was a productive and happy period for him, and led directly to the works for which he is most remembered. He later recalled being challenged by the Dean of King's College
, Eric Milner-White
, to write a set of canticle
s for the choir. The result was the Te Deum
and Jubilate
of the service
known as Collegium Regale, performed in 1944, followed the following year by the Magnificat
and Nunc Dimittis
, and completed in 1956 by the Office of Holy Communion. Collegium Regale and the evening services for Gloucester and St Paul's
Cathedrals which followed it in 1946 and 1951 respectively remain the best known and most admired of the many settings of the Anglican liturgy written by Howells for particular choirs and buildings over the next thirty years.
In 1949, fourteen years after Michael Howells' death, the organist Herbert Sumsion
asked Howells if he had anything that could be performed at the 1950 Three Choirs Festival to be held at Gloucester. Howells decided to bring out the incomplete choral work he had written in his son's memory between 1936 and 1938. (In later years Howells claimed it was at the urging of Vaughan Williams that the piece was disinterred).. The work, retitled Hymnus Paradisi at Sumsion's suggestion, was completed and orchestrated in time for its first performance on 7 September 1950, the day after Michael's 15th anniversary. It was Howells' greatest public and critical success, and for many years was his best known work . Shorter choral works written around this time include the unaccompanied Christmas piece Long long ago (1950), the introit
Behold O God our Defender for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
in 1953, and The House of the Mind (1954) for chorus and strings.
Though not an orthodox Christian, Howells was now chiefly identified with the composition of religious music. His follow-up work to the Hymnus Paradisi was an extended setting of the Latin Mass for soloists, chorus and orchestra, named Missa Sabrinensis after the River Severn
and first performed in Worcester Cathedral
as part of the Three Choirs Festival in 1954. It was considered a disappointment after the success of the earlier work, and its extreme complexity and difficulty has prevented it becoming widely known. The critic Michael Kennedy
, however, considers it one of Howells' finest works. Howells followed it with An English Mass (1956), a smaller-scale setting to English words for chorus, strings and organ. His final large scale choral work was the Stabat Mater
, setting a text whose subsidiary theme of a parent mourning a child had obvious personal significance. He began it in 1959 but found it difficult to complete; it was not performed until 1965. In the meantime Howells had been commissioned to write a motet
for the memorial service of John F. Kennedy
. He chose to set Helen Waddell
's translation of Prudentius
' Hymnus circa Exsequias Defuncti, the first two lines of which had served as epigraph to Hymnus Paradisi. The resulting work, Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing (1963), linking the loss of Kennedy with Howells' loss of his son, is described by Howells' pupil Paul Spicer
as "a classic of twentieth century choral music" and "an undoubted masterpiece".
Howells continued to compose until his late 80s, but wrote nothing further on the scale of the Stabat Mater. One of the last works to appear in his lifetime was the Requiem, edited for performance from his manuscripts in 1980 and published the following year, almost fifty years after its composition.
He died on 23 February 1983 in a nursing home in Putney
and his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey
.
Howells was appointed CBE
in 1953 and Companion of Honour
in 1972. His academic awards included an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge
, awarded in 1961. A "Herbert Howells Society", started by his daughter Ursula in 1987, and a "Herbert Howells Trust", founded after her death in 2005, exist to promote his works.
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
(17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983) was an English composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, organist
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music
Anglican church music
Anglican church music is music that is written for liturgical performance in Anglican church services.Almost all of it is written for choir with or without organ accompaniment...
.
Life
Howells was born in LydneyLydney
Lydney is a small town and civil parish in the English county of Gloucestershire. It is located on the west bank of the River Severn, close to the Forest of Dean. The town lies on the A48 road, next to the Lydney Park gardens with its Roman temple in honour of Nodens.-Transport:The Severn Railway...
, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, the youngest of the six children of Oliver Howells, a plumber, painter, decorator and builder, and his wife Elizabeth. His father played the organ at the local Baptist church, and Herbert himself showed early musical promise, first deputising for his father, and then moving at the age of eleven to the local Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
parish church as choirboy and unofficial deputy organist. The Howells family's financial position was always precarious and at some point in Howells' adolescence his father became bankrupt, a deep humiliation in a small community at the time and one from which Howells never fully recovered. Financially assisted by a member of the family of Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe
Charles Bathurst, 1st Viscount Bledisloe
-External links:*...
who had taken an interest in the budding musician, Howells began music lessons in 1905 with Herbert Brewer
Herbert Brewer
Sir Arthur Herbert Brewer was an English composer and organist. As organist of Gloucester Cathedral from 1896 until his death, he contributed a good deal to the Three Choirs Festival for 30 years....
, the organist of Gloucester Cathedral
Gloucester Cathedral
Gloucester Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Indivisible Trinity, in Gloucester, England, stands in the north of the city near the river. It originated in 678 or 679 with the foundation of an abbey dedicated to Saint Peter .-Foundations:The foundations of the present...
, and at sixteen became his articled pupil
Articled clerk
An articled clerk, also known as an articling student, is an apprentice in a professional firm in Commonwealth countries. Generally the term arises in the accountancy profession and in the legal profession. The articled clerk signs a contract, known as "articles of clerkship", committing to a...
at the Cathedral alongside Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
and Ivor Gurney
Ivor Gurney
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English composer and poet.-Life:Born at 3 Queen Street, Gloucester in 1890, the second of four children of David Gurney, a tailor, and his wife Florence, a seamstress, Gurney showed musical ability early...
. The latter became a close friend, the pair going on long walks through the Gloucestershire countryside discussing their shared love of music and English literature. Another formative experience for the young Howells was the premiere in September 1910 at the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival
Three Choirs Festival
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
of Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, also known as the Tallis Fantasia, is a work for string orchestra by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. It was composed in 1910, and performed for the first time in September of that year at Gloucester Cathedral for the Three Choirs Festival...
. Howells liked to relate in after years how Vaughan Williams sat next to him for the remainder of the concert and shared his score of Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
's The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...
with the awestruck aspiring composer. Both Vaughan Williams and the Tudor composers of which Tallis was one profoundly influenced Howells' later work.
In 1912, following the example of Ivor Gurney, Howells moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music. Here his teachers included Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words...
and Charles Wood
Charles Wood (composer)
Charles Wood was an Irish composer and teacher.Born in Armagh, Ireland, he was the fifth child and third son of Charles Wood Sr. and Jemima Wood. His father was a tenor in the choir of the nearby St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh , and later worked as the Diocesan Registrar of the church...
. Among Howells' contemporaries in the student body were Gurney, Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
and Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba, composed in 1938.-Biography:...
. Howells blossomed in what he considered the "cosy family" atmosphere of the College and his Mass in the Dorian Mode was performed at Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral in London is the mother church of the Catholic community in England and Wales and the Metropolitan Church and Cathedral of the Archbishop of Westminster...
under R.R. Terry
Richard Runciman Terry
Sir Richard Runciman Terry was an English organist, choir director and musicologist. He is noted for his pioneering revival of Tudor liturgical music. He is often credited as R. R. Terry or simply R...
within weeks of his arrival. For the most part however his music at this time was orchestral; works included a piano concerto, withdrawn after its first performance, a light orchestral suite, The B's, portraying his friends at the college, and the Three Dances for violin and orchestra. More typical of the works with which Howells was later to be associated were his earliest important compositions for organ, the first set of Psalm Preludes (1915-16) and the first of the op. 17 Rhapsodies.
Howells' promise seemed likely to be cut short in 1915 when he was diagnosed with Graves' disease
Graves-Basedow disease
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease where the thyroid is overactive, producing an excessive amount of thyroid hormones...
and given six months to live. His poor health prevented him from being called to the Front in World War I, arguably preserving him from the worse fate awaiting Gurney and others of his friends and contemporaries. At St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...
he was given the previously untried treatment of radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
injections in the neck, administered twice a week over a period of two years. For much of this time Howells travelled between London for treatment and Lydney where he was nursed by his mother. He was nonetheless still able to compose and in 1916 produced the first work of his maturity. The Piano Quartet in A minor, dedicated to "the hill at Chosen and Ivor Gurney who knows it" was in the following year one of the first works published under the auspices of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust is a charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom, established by Scottish-born American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie on the model of his U.S. foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York....
. In the following year Howells became assistant organist at Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England, considered one of the leading examples of Early English architecture....
, but only held the post for a few months, finding the repeated journeys to London for treatment too difficult. Friends then arranged for a grant from the Carnegie Trust, which paid for Howells to assist R.R. Terry in editing the voluminous Latin Tudor repertoire that Terry and his choir were reviving at Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral
Westminster Cathedral in London is the mother church of the Catholic community in England and Wales and the Metropolitan Church and Cathedral of the Archbishop of Westminster...
. The work provided Howells with a comfortable income and enabled him to absorb the English Renaissance style which he loved and would evoke in his own music. His first significant works for choir, the Three Carol Anthems (Here is the Little Door, A Spotless Rose and Sing Lullaby) were written around this time.
In 1920 Howells married Dorothy Dawe (1891 – 1975), a singer whom he had met in 1911 when deputizing as her accompanist. The marriage endured despite Howells' frequent infidelities, and produced two children, Ursula
Ursula Howells
Ursula Howells was an English actress whose elegant presence kept her much in demand for roles in film and television....
(1922 – 2005), later an actress, and Michael (1926 – 1935).
In the same year he joined the staff of the Royal College of Music, where he was to remain until 1979. Among his pupils were Robert Simpson
Robert Simpson (composer)
Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music , and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells...
, Gordon Jacob
Gordon Jacob
Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob was an English composer. He is known for his wind instrument composition and his instructional writings.-Life:...
, Paul Spicer
Paul Spicer (musician)
Paul Spicer is an English composer, conductor and organist. He has worked as a music teacher, at the Royal College of Music and the Birmingham Conservatoire, as a producer for BBC Radio 3, and as artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir, the Finzi Singers...
and Imogen Holst
Imogen Holst
Imogen Clare Holst, CBE was a British composer and conductor, and sole child of composer Gustav Holst.Imogen Holst was brought up in west London and educated at St Paul's Girls' School, where her father was director of music...
. The post at the RCM, which from 1925 he combined with the position of Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School
St Paul's Girls' School is a senior independent school, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England.-History:In 1904 a new day school for girls was established by the trustees of the Dean Colet Foundation , which had run St Paul's School for boys since the sixteenth century...
, and frequent work as a competition adjudicator, was to reduce the amount of time he could devote to composition, but he continued to write orchestral and chamber music, including the string quartet In Gloucestershire (originally written 1916, but rewritten in whole or in part several times and not reaching its final form until the 1930s), the overture Merry Eye (1920) and the second Piano Concerto (1925). The first performance of the last named work occasioned a demonstration in the concert hall from a hostile critic. Howells, always over-sensitive to criticism, withdrew the work and produced few significant compositions for several years. One exception was Lambert's Clavichord
Clavichord
The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces...
(1928), one of the few compositions by a twentieth-century composer for that instrument. It was inspired by a clavichord lent to Howells by his friend Herbert Lambert, an instrument maker and photographer based in Bath
Bath
Bath is a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in the south west of England. It is situated west of London and south-east of Bristol. The population of the city is 83,992. It was granted city status by Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, and was made a county borough in 1889 which...
. Several other major compositions written around this time however remained unperformed, notably an a capella Requiem
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
to English words written in 1932, and a choral work, A Kent Yeoman's Wooing Song, written the following year.
In September 1935 Howells' placid existence as teacher, adjudicator and occasional composer was abruptly shattered when his nine-year-old son Michael contracted polio
Poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...
during a family holiday, dying in London three days later. Howells was deeply affected and continued to commemorate the event until the end of his life. At the suggestion of his daughter Ursula he sought to channel his grief into music, and over the next three years composed much of the large-scale choral work which was eventually to become Hymnus Paradisi, drawing on material from the unpublished Requiem of 1932. This remained, in Howells' words, "a personal, almost secret document" until 1950. Other commemorative works written around this time include the slow movement of the Concerto for Strings (in joint memory of Michael and Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
), the hymn tune Michael (to the words "All My Hope on God is Founded" by Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...
) and the unfinished Cello Concerto, on which Howells had been working at the time of the boy's death and which he found himself unable to complete. To a greater or lesser extent, however, much of Howells' subsequent music shows the influence of this loss.
From the late 1930s Howells turned increasingly to choral and organ music, composing a second series of Psalm Preludes followed by a set of Six Pieces (begun 1939), of which the third, Master Tallis's Testament, a particular favorite of the composer's, recalled his formative experience of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia. A set of Four Anthems, originally titled In Time of War and including the popular O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem and Like as the Hart, followed in early 1941. In August of that year, Howells was invited to serve as acting organist of St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
, replacing Robin Orr
Robin Orr
Robert Kelmsley Orr CBE was a Scottish composer.Born in Brechin, he studied at the Royal College of Music in London and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Following studies with Alfredo Casella and Nadia Boulanger he returned to Cambridge in 1938 as Organist of St John's College. During his war...
who was away on active service in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Howells' association with Cambridge, which lasted until the end of the war in 1945, was a productive and happy period for him, and led directly to the works for which he is most remembered. He later recalled being challenged by the Dean of King's College
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
, Eric Milner-White
Eric Milner-White
Eric Milner-White CBE DSO OGS was a Dean of York in the Church of England; holding this post between 1941 and his death in 1963.-Early life and education:...
, to write a set of canticle
Canticle
A canticle is a hymn taken from the Bible. The term is often expanded to include ancient non-biblical hymns such as the Te Deum and certain psalms used liturgically.-Roman Catholic Church:From the Old Testament, the Roman Breviary takes seven canticles for use at Lauds, as follows:*...
s for the choir. The result was the Te Deum
Te Deum
The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from its opening Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, rendered literally as "Thee, O God, we praise"....
and Jubilate
Jubilate
Jubilate may refer to:* Psalm 100, from its Latin title* Jubilate Group, British Christian music publishing house...
of the service
Service (music)
In Anglican church music, a service is a musical setting of certain parts of the liturgy, generally for choir with or without organ accompaniment.-Morning Prayer:*Venite *Te Deum or Benedicite...
known as Collegium Regale, performed in 1944, followed the following year by the Magnificat
Magnificat
The Magnificat — also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary — is a canticle frequently sung liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn...
and Nunc Dimittis
Nunc dimittis
The Nunc dimittis is a canticle from a text in the second chapter of Luke named after its first words in Latin, meaning 'Now dismiss...'....
, and completed in 1956 by the Office of Holy Communion. Collegium Regale and the evening services for Gloucester and St Paul's
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
Cathedrals which followed it in 1946 and 1951 respectively remain the best known and most admired of the many settings of the Anglican liturgy written by Howells for particular choirs and buildings over the next thirty years.
In 1949, fourteen years after Michael Howells' death, the organist Herbert Sumsion
Herbert Sumsion
Herbert Whitton Sumsion was an English musician who was organist of Gloucester Cathedral from 1928 to 1967...
asked Howells if he had anything that could be performed at the 1950 Three Choirs Festival to be held at Gloucester. Howells decided to bring out the incomplete choral work he had written in his son's memory between 1936 and 1938. (In later years Howells claimed it was at the urging of Vaughan Williams that the piece was disinterred).. The work, retitled Hymnus Paradisi at Sumsion's suggestion, was completed and orchestrated in time for its first performance on 7 September 1950, the day after Michael's 15th anniversary. It was Howells' greatest public and critical success, and for many years was his best known work . Shorter choral works written around this time include the unaccompanied Christmas piece Long long ago (1950), the introit
Introit
The Introit is part of the opening of the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist for many Christian denominations. In its most complete version, it consists of an antiphon, psalm verse and Gloria Patri that is spoken or sung at the beginning of the celebration...
Behold O God our Defender for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was the ceremony in which the newly ascended monarch, Elizabeth II, was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ceylon, and Pakistan, as well as taking on the role of Head of the Commonwealth...
in 1953, and The House of the Mind (1954) for chorus and strings.
Though not an orthodox Christian, Howells was now chiefly identified with the composition of religious music. His follow-up work to the Hymnus Paradisi was an extended setting of the Latin Mass for soloists, chorus and orchestra, named Missa Sabrinensis after the River Severn
River Severn
The River Severn is the longest river in Great Britain, at about , but the second longest on the British Isles, behind the River Shannon. It rises at an altitude of on Plynlimon, Ceredigion near Llanidloes, Powys, in the Cambrian Mountains of mid Wales...
and first performed in Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester...
as part of the Three Choirs Festival in 1954. It was considered a disappointment after the success of the earlier work, and its extreme complexity and difficulty has prevented it becoming widely known. The critic Michael Kennedy
Michael Kennedy (music critic)
Dr. George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE is an English biographer, journalist and writer on classical music. He joined the Daily Telegraph at the age of 15 in 1941, and began writing music criticism for it in 1948...
, however, considers it one of Howells' finest works. Howells followed it with An English Mass (1956), a smaller-scale setting to English words for chorus, strings and organ. His final large scale choral work was the Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Roman Catholic hymn to Mary. It has been variously attributed to the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi and to Innocent III...
, setting a text whose subsidiary theme of a parent mourning a child had obvious personal significance. He began it in 1959 but found it difficult to complete; it was not performed until 1965. In the meantime Howells had been commissioned to write a motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
for the memorial service of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
. He chose to set Helen Waddell
Helen Waddell
Helen Jane Waddell was an Irish poet, translator and playwright.-Biography:She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her...
's translation of Prudentius
Prudentius
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Roman Christian poet, born in the Roman province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413...
' Hymnus circa Exsequias Defuncti, the first two lines of which had served as epigraph to Hymnus Paradisi. The resulting work, Take Him, Earth, for Cherishing (1963), linking the loss of Kennedy with Howells' loss of his son, is described by Howells' pupil Paul Spicer
Paul Spicer (musician)
Paul Spicer is an English composer, conductor and organist. He has worked as a music teacher, at the Royal College of Music and the Birmingham Conservatoire, as a producer for BBC Radio 3, and as artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir, the Finzi Singers...
as "a classic of twentieth century choral music" and "an undoubted masterpiece".
Howells continued to compose until his late 80s, but wrote nothing further on the scale of the Stabat Mater. One of the last works to appear in his lifetime was the Requiem, edited for performance from his manuscripts in 1980 and published the following year, almost fifty years after its composition.
He died on 23 February 1983 in a nursing home in Putney
Putney
Putney is a district in south-west London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
and his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
.
Howells was appointed CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1953 and Companion of Honour
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
in 1972. His academic awards included an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, awarded in 1961. A "Herbert Howells Society", started by his daughter Ursula in 1987, and a "Herbert Howells Trust", founded after her death in 2005, exist to promote his works.