Programme

On 6 September 1935, Herbert Howells’ son Michael died of spinal meningitis at the age of nine. Howells’ musical response to the tragic death was three-fold and these pieces now stand, to a greater or lesser extent, as memorials to his son: ‘All my hope on God is founded’ to the hymn tune ‘Michael’ is well-known in hymn-singing churches; the large-scale Hymnus Paradisi is scored for chorus and orchestra; the a capella, six-movement Requiem contains some of the most private music Howells ever wrote. Take him, earth, for cherishing, which is dedicated to the memory of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, also has historical links.

Howells began work on the Requiem, not after Michael’s death in 1935, but possibly as early as 1932. There is much similarity, particularly in the choice of text, between this work and the little-known Requiem of Walford Davies. Substantial parts of the music of Howells’ Requiem were later incorporated into the Hymnus Paradisi, the work most ostensibly a musical memorial to Michael. In consequence, the connections with his late son continue to be retrogressively applied, not unjustifiably, to the earlier work. For whatever reason, Howells considered his Requiem so personal an outpouring as to feel the need to withhold it from publication. It was not released until 1980, only three years before the composer’s own death, manuscripts being identified and reassembled by Joan Littlejohn of the Royal College of Music. Similarly, though perhaps unsurprisingly, given the shared music and strength of feeling common to both works, the later Hymnus was also withheld, Vaughan Williams eventually persuading Howells to release it for the 1950 Three Choirs Festival. Howells wrote at length about the genesis and structure of Hymnus, and it is worth quoting here for the light it sheds on the earlier Requiem:

‘The sudden loss in 1935 of an only son, a loss essentially profound and, in its very nature, beyond argument, might naturally impel a composer, after a time, to seek release and consolation in language and terms most personal to him. Music may well have the power beyond any other medium to offer that release and comfort. It did so in my case, and became a personal, private document. For text, I sought immemorial prose; but I used only two lines from the Latin Requiem Mass … knowing that one of them—‘et lux perpetua luceat eis’—would govern the work—especially that one word ‘lux’, ‘light’. Light indeed touches all but one of the six movements. ‘Blessed are the dead’ alone stands outside—and yet is inside of—that same light. Even the gravest verse of the 23rd Psalm reflects it … the 121st Psalm, ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’, blazes with it. [All] the movements are settings of Latin and English texts. These are drawn from the psalms, and the ‘Missa pro defunctis’, and the Book of Common Prayer, and are immemorial reflections upon the transient griefs and indestructible hopes of mankind. All are appropriate to the mood and purpose of the Requiem’.

If the intimate and inextricable links between the Requiem and Hymnus Paradisi cause them to be regarded as soul-mates, the Hymnus (and so, by association, the Requiem) and Take him, earth, for cherishing can be considered stable mates. The common textual derivations, outlined below by Howells, of the Hymnus and the Kennedy Motet, reveal a shared feeling of profound loss. In his own hand, Howells had written two lines from the Prudentius Hymn (the text of the Kennedy Motet) at the top of this score of Hymnus, confirming this shared heritage:

‘Nunc, suscipe, terra, fovendum
Gremioque hunc concipe molli’.
[Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.]

The motet Take him, earth, for cherishing has the dedication ‘To the honoured memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States of America’. It was completed in London on 6th June 1964 and first performed at a memorial service in Washington, by the choir of the Cathedral Church of St. George, Kingston, Canada under the direction of Dr. George N. Maybee. Some nineteen years later, in 1983, the work was sung in Westminster Abbey at the Memorial Service of the composer himself.

Herbert Howells wrote of this work:

‘Within the year following the tragic death of President Kennedy in Texas, plans were made for a dual American-Canadian Memorial Service to be held in Washington. I was asked to compose an a capella work for the commemoration. The text was mine to choose, Biblical or other. Choice was settled when I recalled a poem by Prudentius (AD 348—413). I had already set it in medieval Latin, years earlier, as a study for Hymnus Paradisi (1938). But now I used none of that unpublished setting. Instead, I returned to Helen Waddell’s faultless translation. Here was the perfect text—the Prudentius Hymnus circa Exsequias Defuncti.’

Musically, as Christopher Palmer writes, ‘nothing of this old unpublished setting is incorporated in the new one, yet there is a very real link with Hymnus … [which] originated as a requiem for the composer’s son. Parts of Take him, earth, for cherishing are noticeably bathed in the afterglow of Hymnus Paradisi’.

In our performances, we have tried to capture that ‘afterglow’, perhaps the most outward of musical indications of the intensely personal nature of both the Howells works. The very private, deep-rooted feelings contained within these pieces—and on which we have endeavoured to focus—manifest themselves in any number of contrasting ways: on the one hand fervent and impassioned, on the other, hushed and confidential; at once radiant, rapturous, almost ecstatic, then simple, introverted. This approach to the music of Howells proved equally valid in our interpretation of the Mass of Frank Martin.

Frank Martin was born in Geneva in 1890, the tenth child of a Calvinist minister. The family home abounded with music and the young Frank began piano lessons at the age of four, writing his first composition at nine. After initial studies of maths and physics, Martin decided on a life as a composer, taking private lessons with Joseph Lauber, who remained his only teacher. Composition did not come easily to him and it was not until 1938-1941, with the oratorio Le vin herbé based on the story of Tristan and Isolde and set for twelve soloists and small orchestra, that Martin’s musical style became clearly established: a synthesis of late-Romantic tonality (influenced by Schumann, Chopin, César Franck, Debussy and Ravel) and the Second Viennese School’s twelve-tone system. Perhaps his most successful attempt at this mix, and the work by which he is possibly best known today, is the Petite Symphonie Concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano and strings written in 1945. His output for the voice is not less important: the five Songs of Ariel for a capella choir, taken from his opera Der Sturm of 1956, are settings of words from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But he is perhaps best known amongst choral singers for his Mass for Double Choir, composed early on in his career.

Martin was a deeply religious man. The Mass was the earliest of his many personal sacred compositions, which include In terra pax, Golgotha, Le mystère de la Nativité and a Requiem (1971/2) for soloists, choir, organ and orchestra. All but the final movement of the Mass—the Agnus Dei, added in 1926—was written in 1922 and although a very early work, it clearly shows signs of the mature Martin style: for example, melodies restricted to a limited tonal pan, vocal melismas, fondness for counterpoint, modal and pentatonic scales, irregular bars, a love of the pedal point.

The work embodies the profound nature of Martin’s religious beliefs. It is the only work that Martin wrote purely for liturgical purposes and, such was its intimacy and intensely personal nature, that the composer—like Howells with his Requiem some ten years later—withheld it, the manuscript being kept safe in a drawer for over forty years. The first performance, soon after Martin finally released the work for publication, took place in Hamburg in 1963. As Martin himself wrote: ‘Das war eine Sache zwischen Gott und mir, die niemand anderen etwas anging’—‘This was something between God and me, that concerned nobody else’.

Jeremy Backhouse

Texts

Requiem

[1] Salvator mundi

O Saviour of the world,
who by thy cross and thy precious blood
hast redeemed us,
save us and help us,
we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

[2] Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd:
therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture:
and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul:
and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble me:
thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

[3 & 5] Requiem aeternam

Requiem aeternam dona eis.
Et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

Eternal rest grant unto them.
And let light perpetual shine upon them.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

[4] Psalm 121

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills:
from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh even from the Lord:
who hath made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
and he that keepeth thee will not sleep.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel:
shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord himself is thy keeper:
he is thy defence upon thy right hand;
so that the sun shall not burn thee by day,
neither the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil:
yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in:
from this time forth and for evermore.

[6] I heard a voice from heaven

I heard a voice from heaven,
saying unto me,
Write,
From henceforth blessed are the dead
which die in the Lord:
even so saith the Spirit,
for they rest from their labours.

[7] Take him, earth, for cherishing

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
to thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
noble even in its ruin.

Once was this a spirit's dwelling,
by the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating,
Christ the prince of all its living.

Guard him well, the dead I give thee,
not unmindful of his creature
shall he ask it: he who made it
symbol of his mystery.

Comes the hour God hath appointed
to fulfil the hope of men,
then must thou, in very fashion,
what I give, return again.

Not though ancient time decaying
wear away these bones to sand,
ashes that a man might measure
in the hollow of his hand:

Not though wandering winds and idle,
drifting through the empty sky,
scatter dust was nerve and sinew,
is it given to man to die.

Once again the shining road
leads to ample Paradise;
open are the woods again,
that the serpent lost for men

Take, O take him, mighty leader,
take again thy servant's soul.
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant
balm upon the icy stone.

Mass:

[8] Kyrie Eleison

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.

[9] Gloria

Gloria in excelsis Deo,
et in terra pax hominibus,
bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te, benedicimus te,
adoramus te, glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi
propter magnam gloriam tuam.
Domine Deus, Rex coelestis,
Deus pater omnipotens.
Domine Fili unigenite
Jesu Christe.
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei,
filius patris,
qui tollis peccata mundi,
miserere nobis.
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
suscipe deprecationem nostram.
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,
miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus sanctus;
tu solus Dominus.
Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe,
cum Sancto Spiritu,
in gloria Dei Patris.
Amen.

Glory be to God on high
and on earth peace,
goodwill towards men.
We praise thee, we bless thee,
we worship thee, we glorify thee.
We give thanks to thee
for thy great glory.
O Lord God, heavenly king,
God the Father almighty.
O Lord, the only begotten Son,
Jesus Christ.
O Lord God, lamb of God,
son of the Father,
that takest away the sins of the world,
have mercy upon us.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
receive our prayer.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.
For thou only art holy;
thou only art the Lord.
Thou only, O Christ,
with the Holy Ghost,
art most high in the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

[10] Credo

Credo in unum Deum,
patrem omnipotentem,
factorem coeli et terrae,
visibilium omnium et invisibilium.
Jesum Christum,
filium Dei unigenitum,
et ex Patre natum
ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo; lumen de lumine;
Deo verum de Deo vero;
genitum non factum;
consubstantialem Patri;
per quem omnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos homines;
et propter nostram salutem
descendit de coelis,
et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto,
ex Maria Virgine;
et homo factus est.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis
sub Pontio Pilato.
Passus et sepultus est.
Et resurrexit tertia die
secundum Scripturas;
et ascendit in coelum,
sedet ad dexteram Patris;
et iterum venturus est cum gloria
judicare vivos et mortuos;
cujus regni non erit finis.
Et in Spiritum Sanctum,
Dominum et vivificantem,
qui ex Patre filioque procedit,
qui cum Patre et Filio simul
adoratur et conglorificatur
qui locutus est per prophetas;
et in unam sanctam Catholicam
et apostolicam ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma
in remissionem peccatorum.
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum
et vitam venturi saeculi.
Amen.

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of his Father
before all worlds.
God of God; light of light;
very God of very God;
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made;
who for us men
and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost
of the Virgin Mary;
and was made man.
And was crucified also for us
under Pontius Pilate
He suffered and was buried.
And the third day he rose again
according to the scriptures;
and ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again with glory
to judge both the quick and the dead;
whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life,
who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
who spake by the prophets.
And I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic church.
I acknowledge one baptism
for the remission of sins.
And I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

[11] Sanctus and Benedictus

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,
Domine Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt coeli et terrae gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.

Benedictus qui venit
in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.

Holy , holy, holy,
Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.
Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

[12] Agnus Dei

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.