A day with Howells

Make that three days. And more to come.

Sunday, May 14
The choir is to sing the Howells anthem “Let God arise.” (Here is a performance by the choir of Chichester Cathedral)
A setting of verses from Psalm 68, it fits the Sunday after the Ascension in Year A, which is May 28. We have been rehearsing it for several weeks now (with a degree of grumbling from the choir over its difficulty, and the prospect of attempting it on Memorial Day weekend), but I have not properly worked out the accompaniment. Now is the time: three hours this evening, sufficient to do the fingering for about two-thirds of it.

I know the sacred choral music of Howells fairly well, but had not encountered this anthem. It was in the pile of choral octavos left by my predecessor when he retired in 2000. Over the years, I have nibbled the disordered collection of single copies, mostly gathered by him at workshops and AAM conventions, from five filing boxes to one stack of less than two feet. One reason I have not simply recycled it all is that I occasionally find something like this: an anthem by Howells that is new to me. Reading through it a few months ago, I thought of the Sunday at the end of May, penciled it in, and ordered the copies.

It replaces a composition of my own, a setting of the enormous Genevan Psalter tune for Psalm 68, in my opinion perhaps the most magnificent of that Psalter and a favorite of the early Calvinists with its warlike ferocity. It is the one thing I have written that got a bit of play; through a chain of circumstances, it was performed at the inauguration of the president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, a place where the Genevan Psalter remained important, at least on that day many years ago. But the Howells is far better than anything I could write.

Howells, writing during the early days of the Second World War, knew about warlike ferocity all too well. He captures the antidote in the middle section of the anthem:

He is a Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause of the widows, even God in his holy habitation. He is the God that maketh men to be of one mind in an house; and bringeth the prisoners out of captivity.

Tuesday, May 16
A day mostly filled with meetings. I find ninety minutes to finish the fingering, my only music-related work of the day beyond a bit of improvisation at the piano.

Wednesday, May 17
My reaction to a first exposure to the music of Herbert Howells was akin to his reaction to the music of Vaughan Williams. It was not until graduate school – his name was not mentioned at all in my undergraduate music history courses, nor theory and composition. Nor, for that matter, was Vaughan Williams; it was as if British music ceased to exist after Purcell and Handel. But at the Choir College, I was able to hear the Choir of Men, Boys, and Girls at Trinity Church, Princeton – and they sang “Like as the hart.” I could not sleep that night, not after such music.

“What is this?” I thought. “How have I missed out on this, all these years?” It was as if it were from another world, a place of beauty and longing and aching remembrance of ages past.

I have since played some of his organ music – quite a bit of it, actually – and have been able to teach and direct a few of his anthems and service settings. For a while, I was a member of the Herbert Howells Society, my only foray into a professional society focused on the music of one composer. I was part of a rather short list of American members, most of them leaders in the musical world – people like Gerre Hancock and Bruce Neswick, with whom I did not properly belong. But I shared with them a love for this man’s musical voice.

And now, a fine large anthem to learn and teach. I spend two hours at the organ, working out registrations; it is ready for tonight’s rehearsal.

But it is not the only Howells of the day, for today we begin rehearsal on the Collegium Regale Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for the RSCM Course. I had worried much over this, in combination with Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” – will the two pieces (along with the rest of the list, including some shorter pieces that will be challenging) be too much for the Course? And with the large group we are bringing from our parish comes large responsibility – will these choristers, my own choristers whom I love and have sought to train, will they be up to the challenge? I spend another hour or so studying the score over midday dinner, learning it in order to teach it.

At the afternoon rehearsal, we begin with the Gloria. They sing through it with ease. We work through the rest of the Magnificat, backwards to the front, finishing with a straight sing-through. It is glorious.

It brought back another memory of the choir at Trinity Church, Princeton. One sunny January afternoon, I observed a Girls’ Choir rehearsal as they sight-read part of the Mozart Requiem. I so wanted to someday work with a choir like that.

Well, I do.

Today’s work, these dozen or so choristers standing around the piano and singing Howells, was the equal to what I remembered from that January day.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Afterword
We did not rehearse "Let God arise" with the organ after all; a severe thunderstorm kept the youth choir and others downstairs for a long while, a half-hour into the time scheduled for the adult rehearsal, and kept most of the adult choir away. We contented ourselves with work at the piano.

That leaves one rehearsal; next Wednesday. I am no longer worried about the Collegium Regale; now I am worried about "Let God arise." We shall see what happens.