Herbert Howells: Master Tallis’s Testament & Like as the Hart

Howells is best known for his output of chamber music, solo song and church music. Amongst the last-named, his most popular works are settings of the canticles for King’s College Cambridge, and for the cathedrals of St Paul’s, Gloucester, Winchester, and Chichester, as well as for several American choral establishments. Larger scale choral works include the motet Take Him Earth, written in memory of JFK, the Hymnus Paradisi and the Requiem – the latter two written in response to the death of his son Michael, aged 9, from meningitis, a event from which Howells never totally recovered.

Howells was born in Gloucestershire, and as an organ pupil at Gloucester Cathedral began to compose at an early age. In 1912 he won a scholarship to the RCM, where his teachers were Stanford and Wood, and, in 1913, Stanford himself conducted the premiere of Howells’ piano concerto. An early appointment as sub-organist of Salisbury Cathedral was short-lived because of ill-health, but in 1920 Howells followed in Stanford’s footsteps and began teaching composition at the RCM, which he continued to do for over 60 years, during which time he taught Britten and Tippett. Other appointments included Director of Music at St Paul’s Girls’ School, in succession to Holst, and Professor of Music at the University of London.

Howells was a close friend of Vaughan Williams and Walter de la Mare (much of whose poetry he set to music), and his work was inspired not by religion but by poetry, the magnificent architecture of the great mediaeval English cathedrals, and the countryside. Howells’ style fuses skilful melodic writing with a unique approach to harmony, pushing tonal and modal boundaries and creating a truly distinctive soundworld. The music shows influence from Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius and Walton. It is unique and highly charged, serene and subtle and yet very complex.

Master Tallis's Testament (organ solo)

Perhaps the best known of Herbert Howells’s Six Pieces for Organ (published 1953), Master Tallis’s Testament was written in 1940. The piece is essentially a set of variations on the theme outlined at the very opening, paying homage to one of England’s greatest sixteenth-century composers, Thomas Tallis. Tallis was a vital composer in adapting and developing the English choral tradition through periods of religious change and uncertainty. Like many composers of his generation, Howells looked back to earlier English composers for inspiration. The choice of a modal G minor and lilting 6/8 rhythm gently evokes something of the atmosphere of the past, while at the same time Howells employs many of the distinctive characteristics of the English romantic organ to colourful and sometimes powerful effect.

Like as the Hart

Like as the Hart (the words from Psalm 42) is the third of a set of four motets using texts from the psalms, written in 1941. The opening melody, full of longing and wistfulness, is a brilliant and rhapsodic expression of the text, and the middle section, begun by the sopranos, is truly plaintive in its nature. The piece is in a developed ternary form.

Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks,

So longeth my soul after Thee o Lord,

My soul is athirst for God,

Yea, even for this living God.

When shall I come to appear before the presence of God.

My tears have been my meat day and night

While they daily say unto me,

Where is now thy God?

Notes by Peter Parfitt
©2011 Aberdeen Bach Choir