Howells: Rhapsodic Quintet, Violin Sonata 3, Clarinet Sonata, Harp Prelude

Herbert HOWELLS (1892-1983) Chamber MusicHerbert Howells is known chiefly for his large body ofchurch music, arguably the finest by any English composer of the twentiethcentury, but he also wrote major choral, orchestral and chamber works. He was apupil of Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral from 1905 to 1911, then, from1912 to 1916, studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles VilliersStanford and Charles Wood. Apart from composing he was active in the fields ofteaching and adjudicating, and taught at the Royal College of Music for overforty years; succeeded Holst as director of music at St Paul's Girls School,and was professor of music at London University from 1954 to 1964. He was madeCBE in 1953 and became a Companion of Honour in 1972. Howell's voice as a composer drew from four sources ofinspiration: the music of the Tudor period, the works of Vaughan Williams,English folk-song, and the landscape of his native Gloucestershire. Hisorchestral works include the Elegy (1917), the Fantasia for cello (1937) andthe Concerto for Strings (1939). Among chamber works are the Piano Quartet(1916), the string quartet In Gloucestershire (1916 - c1935 ), three violinsonatas, an oboe sonata and a clarinet sonata. His mastery of large-scalechoral forces is shown by his masterpiece Hymnus Paradisi (1938, revised in1950), Missa Sabrinensis (1954) and Stabat mater (1963). On a smaller scale theRequiem (1932) and the Motet on the Death of President Kennedy, Take him,earth, for cherishing (1964) rank high among his achievements. Outstandingamong his many canticle settings is Collegium Regale (1945) written for King'sCollege, Cambridge. He also made a substantial contribution to organ literatureand wrote many fine songs, primarily in settings of poems by his friend Walterde la Mare, including King David (1919). At the outset of his career Howells came to prominencelargely through a series of striking chamber works including the RhapsodicQuintet composed in 1919 for the clarinettist Oscar Street. According to theleading Howells scholar, Paul Spicer, whose book Herbert Howells is afascinating study of the composer's life and works, Howells was greatlypreoccupied with problems relating to the form of the Rhapsodic Quintet. Hecast it in a single movement, a structure he explored several times and whichreflects the contemporaneous ambitions of Walter Wilson Cobbett (1847-1937), abusinessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and themusic of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. He was particularly interested inthe instrumental fantasy (or phantasy as Cobbett preferred), a form in whichseveral unrelated but varied sections form the basis for a single extendedwork. In 1905 he established the Cobbett prize for chamber works in onemovement which Howells won in 1917 with his Phantasy String Quartet.Howells described the Quintet as having 'a mystic quality',which may be sensed at the outset in the impassioned unison theme that sweepsupwards.