Notes for: July 22, 2014
Herbert Howells was an English composer, organist, and teacher, most famous today for his large output of Anglican church music.
Howells was born in Lydney in Gloucestershire, a rural county in southwest England, comprising part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean. This part of England has traditionally exerted a strong influence on its native sons, and Howells was no exception. While he moved to London in 1912 to study at the Royal College of Music and remained there until 1979 as a teacher, his affection for the culture and landmarks of Gloucestershire was reflected in his music.
This quartet, composed in 1916, is a case in point. It apparently began as “some folk-tunes done hurriedly” while he was waiting for tea to be served by an unpunctual landlady. He dedicated the work “to the hill at Chosen” or Churchdown, located between Gloucester and Cheltenham, from which there are spectacular views of the surrounding countryside and of a lovely ancient church at the highest point.
According to Howells’s close friend, the poet and musicologist Marion Scott, the three movements of the work depict the hill in different physical aspects. Writing an appreciation of the work shortly after its completion, she gave a program for the work based on conversations with Howells:
When the first movement opens it is dawn, and the hill wind, pure, eternally free and uplifting, is blowing; gradually the greyness changes to crimson, the half-light to full radiance, mystery to vision, dawn to day.
The second movement is the hill upon a day in mid-summer, and the thoughts are those which come as a man lies on the grass on his back gazing upwards into the vast vault of the sky, seeing “the giant clouds go royally”; watching the blue depths of height untold flow outward to surrounding immensity until, floating on the flood of wonder, mind and soul are almost loosed from the earthly anchorage.
The finale is the hill in the month of March, with splendid winds of Spring rioting over it, and flashing in the exuberant rush, wild daffodils goldenly dancing. That is as much of the basis of the quartet as Herbert Howells yet allows to be told.