Continue the journey…
We recommend five further works to explore after Howells’s Requiem
AFinzi’s 1924 Requiem da Camera is a work of restrained contemplation
n obvious place to begin is with Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi of 1936, four of whose movements use the same texts as his Requiem. It is not hard to hear where Howells borrowed material from the earlier work but, scored for soloists, chorus and orchestra, the Hymnus Paradisi is a much bigger beast, in terms of both length and emotional clout. (Joan Rodgers (soprano), Anthony Rolfe-johnson (tenor); BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/richard Hickox Chandos CHAN9744)
In 1964, Howells was commissioned to write a choral work for a memorial service in Washington to mark the death of President Kennedy the previous year. For the resulting motet, Take him, earth, for cherishing, he chose a text by Prudentius that he had initially earmarked for the Hymnus Paradisi. Even by Howells’s standards, the harmonic language is complex, bar an impassioned, hymn-like ‘Take, O take him’ appeal at the work’s heart. (Tenebrae/nigel Short Signum SIGCD267)
The model for Howells’s Requiem, Walford Davies’s A Short Requiem was written in 1915 in memory of soldiers killed in the First World War. Of a similarly gentle nature to Howells’s work, it is less harmonically adventurous though, in its own way, no less moving. (Pegasus/matthew Altham Signum SIGCD825)
Among the fallen in
WWI was Ernest Farrar, composer, teacher and close friend of Gerald
Finzi who, in 1924, composed a Requiem da Camera in his memory. Setting texts by Masefield, Hardy and WW Gibson for soloists, choir and small orchestra, it is largely a work of restrained contemplation. (Soloists; London Mozart Players, City of London Choir/ Hilary Davan Wetton Naxos 8.573426)
Dating from three years earlier is the Mass in G minor by Vaughan Williams. Just as he does in his orchestral
Tallis Fantasia, VW places a quartet of soloists away from a double choir to create an antiphonal effect. The work is also imbued with the spirit of composers of the 16th century – just as those composers had a major impact on VW at the time, they would later influence Howells too. (Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge/andrew Nethsingha Signum SIGCD541)