Hymnus Paradisi at 75

‘It is the blaze of a thousand suns in the Sanctus; it is a golden radiance in the penultimate chorus; and at last, to the words requiem sempiternam, it is the light of the dawn.'  So wrote the Times music critic Frank Howes after the première performance in 1950 of Hymnus Paradisi, the great choral and orchestral Requiem, and perhaps the master-work, of Herbert Howells.  This year has been the seventy-fifth anniversary of that first performance, and also the ninetieth of the bereavement which precipitated it: the death, aged only nine, of Howells' son Michael.

‘Requiem aeternam…’  The second movement of Hymnus Paradisi, given in a memorable Proms performance on the 29th August, 2012, by the combined forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus, the London Philharmonic Choir, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.  The music runs on without a break into the 23rd Psalm.

The story has been much told elsewhere: of the shock of Michael's death — in the space of only three days, from meningitis, in the middle of a holiday — of the subsequent freezing of Howells' inspiration, of his daughter Ursula's suggestion that he write something in Michael's memory, of the composer's nevertheless keeping his work private for over a decade, until at last Herbert Sumsion and Ralph Vaughan Williams persuaded him to have this 'personal, almost secret document' performed.  He was the conductor at that first performance, at the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester in 1950, the day after the fifteenth anniversary of Michael's death.  

'The sudden loss in 1935 of an only son, a loss essentially profound and, in its very nature, beyond argument, might naturally impel a composer, after a time, to seek release and consolation in language and terms most personal to him,' acknowledged Howells in a BBC radio talk in 1964.  'Music may well have the power beyond any other medium to offer that release and comfort.  It did so in my case, and became a personal, private document.'

This year's anniversary has been marked by a number of performances, notably in Guildford, Hereford, London and Nottingham.  These have been all the more welcome because they are so rare.  For all that this is not only Howells' own masterpiece, but arguably one of the most extraordinary works in English music — the journalist Simon Heffer has even called it 'one of the great works of the whole musical canon, and one that stakes a claim to be the finest piece ever written in the English choral tradition' — it is performed with vanishing rarity, perhaps because of its technical difficulty and the large forces for which it was written.  It may also suffer because of a slight ambiguity of genre — it is meant really for the rich acoustic of a church or cathedral, not a concert hall, yet is neither liturgical in nature nor an oratorio, but a kind of sacred symphonic cantata.  In any case, to have four in a year is special.

Howells at Gloucester Cathedral on the 7th September,
1950, just before conducting the first performance of
Hymnus Paradisi.  The previous day had been the fifteenth
anniversary of his son Michael’s death.
Royal College of Music, ref. LDRCM.Ph.22.77, retrieved from
http://museumcollections.rcm.ac.uk/collection/Details/collect/5038,
reproduced under CC BY 4.0 licence, cropped and enhanced slightly

I have loved this music since my mid-teens, but before this year had only heard it live once, at the Proms in 2012.  This year, impelled to seize every possible opportunity, I managed to hear it twice: at Guildford — with the Guildford Choral Society and Chichester Singers and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Willcocks — and then in Hereford Cathedral as part of the Three Choirs Festival, with the Festival Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra under Adrian Partington.  The performance at Guildford was magnificent, but it was at Hereford, in a seat hidden away in the south transept, that I experienced the piece, I realised, for the first time as it was really meant to be heard: that is, in a cathedral acoustic, from a distance,  possibly not even in sight of the musicians (as indeed i was not), as if overhearing, achingly anticipating, the choruses of Heaven itself.  In those great soaring spaces of the nave and transepts and chancel, with July twilight lingering in the tracery and the dusk seeping in under the high vaults, the stupendous crescendoes and climaxes had room to expand to their full proportions, to rise and fall and to be only sustained and intensified, as the composer intended, by the bone body of the church.  Only in a place like this could the music expand to its full scale.  It was, I understood at last, inseparable from the setting of a great church.  The church was part of the music, and actually implicit in the score.  Howells had made the entire cathedral his instrument.

Hymnus Paradisi is a work filled with light, the 'lux aeterna' of the prayer from the Requiem Mass.  As Howells wrote,  'Light indeed touches all but one of the six movements… Even the gravest verse of the 23rd Psalm reflects it; and the [Sanctus] blazes with it’.  Crucial to that luminous effect are Howells' radiant harmonies, and therefore, in turn, the purity of tone that goes to make them.  One thing that in consequence has marred many recordings of Hymnus Paradisi for me has been the vibrato used by the soloists.  They are naturally used to taking a leading role, but Howells uses them more as individual instruments, calling for them to emerge from and retreat into the rich overall tapestry of sound.  I was resigned, this year, for the same.  But both Charlotte Bowden at Guildford and Rebecca Hardwick in Hereford surprised and delighted me with precisely the purity and evenness that I had thought so elusive.  Rebecca Hardwick in particular seemed to convey the clarity and luminosity that was needed — that Howells surely wanted — shining definitely and brilliantly, certainly, but not dominating, and making her vital, plangent contribution to the overall sound without overdoing anything.  Hers was the simple voice of the soul entering the everlasting light.  It was profoundly moving.

I have also been meaning to mention a new arrangement of Hymnus Paradisi by Iain Farrington for the reduced forces of soloists, choir, chamber orchestra and organ.  This was first performed at Yale University in America in February 2024, with David Hill conducting.  This is extraordinary because even in this pared-down version one can hear how richly-woven the music is, how deftly-crafted.  The opening of the final movement, 'Holy is the True Light', is particularly astonishing in this regard.  Here, too, Howells' music resembles the intricacy and craftsmanship of the great cathedrals which, as his daughter recalled, he 'adored', even though he himself lacked the faith they proclaimed — but that is another story.

Howells' Hymnus Paradisi, arr. Iain Farrington, performed by the Yale Schola Cantorum, 17th February 2024, with an interesting pre-amble by the conductor, David Hill.

Reference sources:

Christopher Palmer, Herbert Howells: A Study (Sevenoaks: Novello, 1978)

Paul Spicer, Herbert Howells (Bridgend: Seren, 1998).

Simon Heffer, 'Herbert Howells and Hymnus Paradisi', programme note :https://londonchorus.org.uk/2024/01/08/herbert-howells-and-hymnus-paradisi/