Requiem - Herbert Howells - Harmonium Choral Society Chamber Singers

On My Journey - May 2025
Under the direction of Dr. Anne J. Matlack
Harmonium Choral Society Chamber Singers
Grace Episcopal Church, Madison, NJ
Soloists: Margaret Persing, Elizabeth Monkemeier, PJ Livesey, Holland Jancaitis, Matthew Onigman, Reggie Ramekar

Herbert Howells’ anthems and motets are best known as staples of Anglican church repertoire, although he also wrote orchestral and chamber music. After winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, he studied composition with Stanford and counterpoint with Wood. Stanford called Howells his "son in music." At the RCM, he was considered the best of his generation of composers.
In 1932, he composed the Requiem (a 20-minute a cappella work in both English and Latin) but it was suppressed after the death of his 9-year-old son Michael in 1935 and rediscovered only in 1980 in the Royal College of Music archives by a librarian who had also been a student of Howells. A performance by the BBC Singers soon followed and the score was published the following year. On December 10, 1982, with less than three months to live and now confined to his bed, the 90-year-old Howells himself listened spellbound to a broadcast of his piece for the first time.
Many of the themes of this a cappella requiem can be found in the large-scale Hymnus Paradisi, his full-scale requiem for orchestra and chorus in memory of Michael. The more intimate Requiem is structured after the first six movements of the Walford Davies (1869–1941) work that inspired it, beginning and ending with texts from the Burial Service from the Book of Common Prayer – the Salvator Mundi and ‘I heard a voice from Heaven’ – with two Anglican chant-like psalms and two settings of the Requiem aeternam from the Latin Requiem Mass in between. There is no Dies Irae or moments of fear and hell, but rather contemplative, heaven-yearning lines of intimacy and Howells’ unique harmonies.

Full program notes available on our website: http://www.harmonium.org/repertoire
Video/audio production: http://www.showfocused.llc/

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00:00 Salvator mundi
02:02 Psalm 23 (Margaret Persing, Elizabeth Monkemeier, PJ Livesey)
04:35 Requiem aeternam (1)
07:16 Psalm 121 (Holland Jancaitis, Matthew Onigman)
10:06 Requiem aeternam (2)
13:22 I heard a voice from heaven (Matthew Onigman, Holland Jancaitis, Reggie Ramekar)