The Music of Herbert Howells

The first large-scale study of the music of Herbert Howells, prodigiously gifted musician and favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Herbert Howells (1892-1983) was a prodigiously gifted musician and the favourite student of the notoriously hard-to-please Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Throughout his long life, he was one of the country's most prominent composers, writing extensively in all genres except the symphony and opera. Yet today he is known mostly for his church music, and there is as yet relatively little serious study of his work. This book is the first large-scale study of Howells's music, affording both detailed consideration of individual works and a broad survey of general characteristics and issues. Its coverage is wide-ranging, addressing all aspects of the composer's prolific output and probing many of the issues that it raises. The essays are gathered in five sections: Howells the Stylist examines one of the most striking aspect of the composer's music, its strongly characterised personal voice; Howells the VocalComposer addresses both his well-known contribution to church music and his less familiar, but also important, contribution to the genre of solo song; Howells the Instrumental Composer shows that he was no less accomplished for his work in genres without words, for which, in fact, he first made his name; Howells the Modern considers the composer's rather overlooked contribution to the development of a modern voice for British music; and Howells in Mourning explores the important impact of his son's death on his life and work. The composer that emerges from these studies is a complex figure: technically fluent but prone to revision and self-doubt; innovative but also conservative; a composer with an improvisational sense of flow who had a firm grasp of musical form; an exponent of British musical style who owed as much to continental influence as to his national heritage. This volume, comprising a collection of outstanding essays by established writers and emergent scholars, opens up the range of Howells's achievement to a wider audience, both professional and amateur. PHILLIP COOKE is Lecturer in Composition at theUniversity of Aberdeen. DAVID MAW is Tutor and Research Fellow in Music at Oriel College, Oxford, holding Lectureships also at Christ Church, The Queen's and Trinity Colleges. CONTRIBUTORS: Byron Adams, Paul Andrews, Graham Barber, Jonathan Clinch, Phillip A. Cooke, Jeremy Dibble, Lewis Foreman, Fabian Huss, David Maw, Diane Nolan Cooke, Lionel Pike, Paul Spicer, Jonathan White. Foreword by John Rutter.

Table of Contents:
Foreword - John Rutter Introduction: Paradox of an establishment composer - David Maw 'In matters of art friendship should not count': Stanford and Howells - Jonathan White Howells and Counterpoint - Lionel Pike Window on a Complex Style: Six Pieces for Organ - Diane Nolan Cooke 'Hidden Artifice': Howells as Song-Writer - Jeremy Dibble A 'Wholly New Chapter' in Service Music: Collegium Regale and the Gloucester Service - Phillip A. Cooke Howells's Use of the Melisma: Word Setting in his Songs and Choral Music - Paul Spicer 'From Merry Eye to Paradise': the Early Orchestral Music of Herbert Howells - Lewis Foreman Lost, Remembered, Mislaid, Re-written: A documentary study of In Gloucestershire - Paul Andrews Style and Structure in the Oboe Sonata and Clarinet Sonata - Fabian Huss 'Tunes all the way'? Romantic Modernism and the Piano Concertos of Herbert Howells - Jonathan Clinch 'a "modern"...but a Britisher too': Howells and the Phantasy - David Maw Austerity, Difficulty and Retrospection: The Late Style of Herbert Howells - Phillip A. Cooke 'In Modo Elegiaco': Howells and the Sarabande - Graham Barber On Hermeneutics in Howells: Some Thoughts on Interpreting his Cello Concerto - Jonathan Clinch Musical Cenotaph: Howells's Hymnus Paradisi and Sites of Mourning - Byron Adams Appendix: Catalogue of the Works of Herbert Howells - Paul Andrews Bibliography of Works Cited

About the Author :
JEREMY DIBBLE is an Emeritus Professor of Music at Durham University where he taught for 30 years. With the Boydell Press, Dibble has published John Stainer: A Life in Music (2007), Hamilton Harty: Musical Polymath (2013), British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought, 1850-1950 (2018) (with Julian Horton), The Music of Frederick Delius (2021) and Charles Villers Stanford: Man and Musician (revised and expanded edition, 2024).

Review :
A major advance towards a fuller and more balanced understanding of the composer. Superb and highly welcome addition to the literature on Howells ... goes a very considerable way towards demonstrating that this neglect is indeed highly unjust ... Unprecedented insight into both known and unfairly neglected corners of his oeuvre and should be keenly sought by anyone with an interest in his work and English music in the twentieth century. Now we can all appreciate these works afresh, with the useful and pertinent insights afforded by this welcome volume. Eye opening dimensions ... fascinating ... Above all, this collection of essays emphasises purely and simply what a sophisticated and accomplished composer he was - headed up by a cameo of a foreword in which Howells enthusiast John Rutter expertly and engagingly sets the scene. The first large-scale and in-depth survey of his music ... Phillip A. Cooke and David Maw have curated and contributed to an excellent resource for anyone who wants to understand fully Howells's contribution to his musical landscape.