Requiem | Herbert Howells - Wise Music Classical

Orchestration
organ [ad lib]
ChorusSSAATTBB
Duration15 min

CategoryChorus a cappella / + 1 instrument
Topic
- Life and death (incl. memorial)
- Religion and spirituality

Composer
Herbert Howells
Text Writer/Librettist

Performances
View Past Performances

Programme Note

Salvator mundi
Psalm 23
Requiem aeternam 1
Psalm 121
Requiem aeternam 2
I heard a voice from Heaven

The Requiem grew out of sketches for Howells's acknowledged masterpiece - Hymnus Paradisi. This had a long gestation period between 1936 and 1950 when it was first performed, but not so long as this work which was only released in 1980.

The inspiration for this work, as for Hymnus, lay in the death at the age of nine of his only son Michael. It was an emotional and spiritual safety-valve for Howells who in this Requiem has created some of the most sublime music since Palestrina; and what can only be described as the vocal equivalent of Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia.

© Paul Spicer

Media

Requiem: Salvator mundi

Requiem: Psalm 23

Requiem aeternam (1)

Requiem: Psalm 121

Requiem aeternam (2)

Requiem: I Heard a Voice from Heaven

Reviews

In 1935, revered English master Herbert Howells lost his only son to polio at the age of nine, and dealt with his bereavement in music, as composer are wont to do. but the music was so intensely personal that Howells kept his boy's Requiem to himself, refusing to have it performed or published until nearly 40 years later, not long before his own death. It immediately became one of the handful of the twentieth century's most cherished choral masterpieces. ...
It's quite simply THE deepest and most sublime artistic distillation of grief and spiritual comfort that I know...

Lindsay Koob, Charleston City Paper

31st May 2012