Herbert Howells

But for the failure of his Second Piano Concerto, Herbert Howells (1892-1983) might have been a very different composer. The hostility that met the work’s 1925 premiere was the turning point in the English musician’s evolution, the moment a successful concert-hall career gave way to a new focus: the Anglican cathedral music with which Howells is synonymous today. Born into a large and financially precarious family in Gloucestershire, Howells’ talent and early training at Gloucester Cathedral earned him a scholarship to study with Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Hailed as the musical leader of his generation, Howells was diagnosed with Graves disease in 1915, threatening to cut both his life and career short. But pioneering treatment prevailed, and he was able to take up appointments at London University and the Royal College of Music. But it was a temporary role—as acting organist of King’s College, Cambridge during World War II—that helped cement the composer’s shift of focus. Early success with songs, chamber and orchestral music gave way to canticles, carols, anthems and organ music. Howells’ distinctive style—richly lyrical and elegiac writing, influenced not only by Elgar and Vaughan Williams but also by Ravel and Tudor polyphony—gave voice not only to the loss of a generation, but also the very personal tragedy of his own son’s death in 1935. This personal loss is woven right through his subsequent work, most explicitly in Hymnus Paradisi and his Stabat Mater.