I've spoken before about the English composer Herbert Howells. In 1935, he suffered the cruel loss to polio of his son Michael (aged 9). It was suggested by his daughter that he try to channel his grief into composition, and he began work on a large-scale choral work in memory of Michael. It remained unfinished, but numerous other works large and small through his career attested to the continuing impact of Michael's death in his father's personal and creative life.
In 1949 Howells was asked if he would compose a large-scale choral/orchestral work for the 1950 Three Choirs Festival. He dug out the unfinished torso of the memorial piece, and set to work on it again. The result, premiered in September of 1950 was Hymnus Paradisi -- by any measure one of the true masterpieces of twentieth-century music.
Groundbreaking it is not, at least not at first glance. There's nothing terribly revolutionary in Howells' handling of voices and instruments, nor in his melodic and structural approach. What is totally unique is the style Howells evolved, distinctively his own, in which conflicting harmonies in differing choral or instrumental voices are used to generate a kind of harmonic tension in the music. The result in Hymnus Paradisi was aptly described by Michael Kennedy as a tissue of luminescence, a glowing musical equivalent of the lux perpetua which is a recurring theme of the texts Howells chose -- the "white radiance of eternity" as Shelley called it.
With that clue in hand, it's easy to hear how the music does indeed begin to glow and pulse with light practically from its first bars. Howells uses his orchestra and voices most imaginatively -- consider the intense burst of orchestral and vocal power in the middle of the second movement. The texts, too, are carefully chosen and arranged to form a continuous line of poetic thought from beginning to end. The first three movements, an instrumental prelude and two movements for choir, soloists and orchestra, are played continuously. Then, after a pause requested by the composer, the last three movements follow one by one. The final movement eventually returns to the single winding line of melody which opened the work 50 minutes earlier.
For me, the emotional heart of the work resides in the fifth movement. A tenor soloists quietly utters the words of scripture, "I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, 'Write...'" and is overlapped in answer by the gently sung chording of the choir with the words: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord". Any lover of Brahms' German Requiem will instantly recognize this as the text set by Brahms in his final movement, and with that they spiritual kinship between the two works comes into focus. Both composers are concerned, not with interceding in prayer for the souls of the dead, but with invoking consolation for the living. Howells continues with a series of rhapsodic, freely sung cadenzas for tenor and soprano, but eventually the music fades quietly away on a simple cadence at the words, "...for they rest from their labours."
Hymnus Paradisi has been recorded just three times, and is very rarely performed outside of Britain (and not terribly frequently even there). This is nothing short of scandalous, in my humble opinion.
Sir David Willcocks helmed the premiere recording in the 1960s for EMI, and it was and is a marvellous unveiling of a uniquely beautiful musical world. I've also heard the much more recent digital Hyperion version conducted by Vernon Handley. Interpretively, and in the choice of soloists, Willcocks has the edge but the Hyperion sound favours Handley and he also has the substantial and beautiful bonus of An English Mass for choir, organ and strings. I've not heard the most recent Chandos recording under Richard Hickox, but if his other English choral recordings are anything to go by it is undoubtedly just as serious a contender.
Please, don't miss up any opportunity that comes your way to encounter this masterly evocation of grief and consolation, a truly great moment in the music of the last century.
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