Herbert Howells

As an homage, this profile is a work in progress, a modest beginning for a great composer and noble gentleman. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Herbert Howells's Playlist - 101 Selections!
I was born in Lydney, Gloucestershire, on 17 October 1892, the youngest of six children and still remember the "the immemorial sound of voices" when I was a chorister in Gloucester Cathedral . This experience would influence my career as a composer, organist and teacher.
Gloucester Cathedral:
At Gloucester Cathedral, I began organ studies along with my friend, Ivor Gurney (who called me "Erbert Owls" - I wrote "Bartholomew" in his honor: track 3 of the MP3 player at the left), with Herbert Brewer and would later study at the Royal College of Music under C.V. Stanford , C.H.H. Parry and Charles Wood after winning an open scholarship competition.
In 1915 I was diagnosed with Graves' disease and given six months to live. Due to the hopelessness of my condition, physicians suggested experimental radium treatment and I was the first person in Britain to be cured with this therapy. During that period I was assistant organist at Salisbury Cathedral in 1917, albeit a brief one because of my illness, which also exempted me from serving in WWI. As I recovered from my illness I stayed with Edward Bairstow in York, which endured a fiery Zeppelin bombing raid one evening. During that sleepless night, I penned my Third Rhapsody for Organ which captures the explosive drama of that incendiary night:

Stephen Cleobury - King's College Chapel: A Celebration of Herbert Howells - ARGO
My early compositions focused chiefly on orchestral and chamber music, including two piano concertos. My dear teacher C. V. Stanford conducted the successful premier of my First Piano Concerto. However my Second Piano Concerto, in 1925, was received with hostility and I essentially ceased composition for nearly a decade.
Moment from my 2nd Piano Concerto - look for MP3 link.
"I am not a religious man any more than Ralph (RVW) was," but when my beloved child Michael died of polio the majority of my compositions that followed would be of the religious sort. My daughter Ursula suggested that I externalize my grief through composition and I resumed work on Requiem which I had begun a couple years earlier (the manuscript even bears a note scribbled with Michael's hand). “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...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_” The catharsis of that work was so profound that it lay in a desk drawer collecting dust for 45 years - I couldn't bear hearing it performed.
We are all endebted to Sir David Willcocks for convincing me that the Requiem was worthy of publishing when I showed him the score in 1981. (Listen to the 23rd Psalm from Requiem in my MP3 player above.) More from Requiem:
1) Requiem Aeternum (I); 2) I Heard a Voice From Heaven (Revelation 14:13)
Corydon Singers - Matthew Best: HYPERION
I soon incorporated many facets of Requiem into Hymnus Paradisi, a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra, in 1938. It wasn't until the urging of Ralph that it was performed in 1950 at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, near my hometown, in the same cathedral I began my music career as a child.
II) Requiem Aeternam : BBC Symphony Orchestra - Richard Hickox - CHANDOS
To commemorate Michael, I also set hymn verses written by Joachim Neander and Robert Seymore Bridges entitled: All My Hope in God is Founded to Michael's Tune :

Cambridge Singers - John Rutter: I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes - COLLEGIUM
After turning my attention to cathedral music, I would often craft my music for the unique acoustical signatures of specific structures in mind as well as choral ensembles.
I wrote several Collegium Regale (King's College) settings for this wondrous chapel.
Nunc dimittis - Collegium Regale Service
Choir of King's College Cambridge - Stephen Cleobury: A Celebration of Herbert Howells - ARGO
I contributed further to the keyboard repertoire by writing for the organ and as well as two delightful sets of miniatures - Lambert's Clavichord and Howell's Clavichord - which allude to the aural-signature of Elizabethan virginalists.
Listen to De la Mare's Pavane and Ralph's Gaillard performed on modern piano.
Selections performed on Lute-Harpsichord
I had the honor of receiving several accolades and honorary doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and continued teaching at the Royal College of Music until the age of 90.
Approaching the final cadence of my life, my daughter Ursula noted the following: ‘In the last months I saw that Hymnus was on the radio and I told him it was on. He asked what it was. I told him that he had written it for Michael. He said “I don’t want to hear it”, but I just left it on. And I went through at the end of it, and there he was just lying there with tears streaming down his face saying “did I write that?”’
In 1983, I was laid to rest in the north choir aisle ( Musicians' Aisle ) of Westminster Abbey next to Purcell , Stanford, and RVW.
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