Home Music 12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells

View more publications by Boydell and Brewer
To Publisher Page
The Music of Herbert Howells
This chapter is in the book The Music of Herbert Howells
222 chapter 12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells P h i l l i p A . C o o k e HERBERT Howells’s setting of the Stabat mater (HH 309) of 1965 is rightly held up as his masterpiece, the culmination of all that he had been striving for in his compositional career, a work that not only defi ned his mature musical language but also represented a composer at the height of his artistic powers, comfortable with his highly wrought and idiosyncratic idiom. It was a piece that would cast a shadow on all Howells’s work both during and after its composition, and its place is as important in the composer’s oeuvre as the early chamber music successes or the triumph of Hymnus paradisi (HH 220). However, if we view the Stabat mater as being the zenith of Howells’s career, how do we then view the works that followed? For Howells continued to compose regularly for another thirteen years and com-posed in excess of forty works. It is easy to view these fi nal works as being a some-what irrelevant addition to his legacy, lacking the burning intensity of the Stabat mater , dealing mainly with smaller- scale genres and invariably being written for cathedrals, Oxbridge colleges and various luminaries. Th e diffi culty, austerity and modernity of these fi nal works has led to few performances, which only emphasises the perceived irrelevance of these pieces and the composer’s slow, autumnal coda. However, this is not necessarily the case, and I aim to show in this chapter that there are many fi ne later works, with much imaginative, beautiful and fi nely con-structed music that provides more than the ‘soft pedalled’ 1 coda that many pre-sume these works are. Although in his fi nal years Howells would rarely reach the high levels of musical complexity and emotional anguish that characterise the Stabat mater , I aim to show that there is a constant process of refi nement, modifi -cation and aesthetic fi ne- tuning that makes many of these works worthy additions to his body of work, and in some cases eclipses some of their more celebrated earlier cousins. But what exactly characterises ‘late style’? What are the fundamental hallmarks of music of this broad term and how do they diff er from music written earlier in a composer’s career? In his comprehensive article ‘Disability and “Late Style” in Music’, Joseph Straus states: Music in a late style is presumed to have certain internal qualities (such as fragmentation, intimacy, nostalgia, or concision) and to be associated with certain external factors (such as the age of the composer, his or her proximity to and foreknowledge of death, a sense of authorial belatedness with respect to signifi cant predecessors, or a feeling of having lived too late within a his-torical period). 21 Spicer, Herbert Howells ,172. 2 Straus, ‘Disability and “Late Style” in Music, 3.
© 2013, Boydell and Brewer

222 chapter 12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells P h i l l i p A . C o o k e HERBERT Howells’s setting of the Stabat mater (HH 309) of 1965 is rightly held up as his masterpiece, the culmination of all that he had been striving for in his compositional career, a work that not only defi ned his mature musical language but also represented a composer at the height of his artistic powers, comfortable with his highly wrought and idiosyncratic idiom. It was a piece that would cast a shadow on all Howells’s work both during and after its composition, and its place is as important in the composer’s oeuvre as the early chamber music successes or the triumph of Hymnus paradisi (HH 220). However, if we view the Stabat mater as being the zenith of Howells’s career, how do we then view the works that followed? For Howells continued to compose regularly for another thirteen years and com-posed in excess of forty works. It is easy to view these fi nal works as being a some-what irrelevant addition to his legacy, lacking the burning intensity of the Stabat mater , dealing mainly with smaller- scale genres and invariably being written for cathedrals, Oxbridge colleges and various luminaries. Th e diffi culty, austerity and modernity of these fi nal works has led to few performances, which only emphasises the perceived irrelevance of these pieces and the composer’s slow, autumnal coda. However, this is not necessarily the case, and I aim to show in this chapter that there are many fi ne later works, with much imaginative, beautiful and fi nely con-structed music that provides more than the ‘soft pedalled’ 1 coda that many pre-sume these works are. Although in his fi nal years Howells would rarely reach the high levels of musical complexity and emotional anguish that characterise the Stabat mater , I aim to show that there is a constant process of refi nement, modifi -cation and aesthetic fi ne- tuning that makes many of these works worthy additions to his body of work, and in some cases eclipses some of their more celebrated earlier cousins. But what exactly characterises ‘late style’? What are the fundamental hallmarks of music of this broad term and how do they diff er from music written earlier in a composer’s career? In his comprehensive article ‘Disability and “Late Style” in Music’, Joseph Straus states: Music in a late style is presumed to have certain internal qualities (such as fragmentation, intimacy, nostalgia, or concision) and to be associated with certain external factors (such as the age of the composer, his or her proximity to and foreknowledge of death, a sense of authorial belatedness with respect to signifi cant predecessors, or a feeling of having lived too late within a his-torical period). 21 Spicer, Herbert Howells ,172. 2 Straus, ‘Disability and “Late Style” in Music, 3.
© 2013, Boydell and Brewer

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. List of Illustrations ix
  4. List of Musical Examples x
  5. List of Tables xv
  6. List of Contributors xvi
  7. Foreword xviii
  8. Acknowledgements xix
  9. Introduction : Paradox of an Establishment Composer 1
  10. Part I Howells the Stylist
  11. 1 ‘In matters of art friendship should not count’: Stanford and Howells 9
  12. 2 Howells and Counterpoint 22
  13. 3 Window on a Complex Style: Six Pieces for Organ 37
  14. PART II Howells the Vocal Composer
  15. 4 ‘Hidden Artifi ce’: Howells as Song- Writer 61
  16. 5 A ‘Wholly New Chapter’ in Service Music: Collegium regale and the Gloucester Service 86
  17. 6 Howells’s Use of the Melisma: Word Setting in His Songs and Choral Music 100
  18. Part III Howells the Instrumental Composer
  19. 7 ‘From “Merry- Eye” to Paradise’: Th e Early Orchestral Music of Herbert Howells 117
  20. 8 Lost, Remembered, Mislaid, Rewritten: A Documentary Study of In Gloucestershire 139
  21. 9 Style and Structure in the Oboe Sonata and Clarinet Sonata 153
  22. Part IV Howells the Modern
  23. 10 ‘Tunes all the way’? Romantic Modernism and the Piano Concertos of Herbert Howells 169
  24. 11 ‘I am a “modern” in this, but a Britisher too’: Howells and the Phantasy 185
  25. 12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells 222
  26. Part V Howells in Mourning
  27. 13 In modo elegiaco : Howells and the Sarabande 239
  28. 14 On Hermeneutics in Howells: Some Th oughts on Interpreting His Cello Concerto 274
  29. 15 Musical Cenotaph: Howells’s Hymnus paradisi and Sites of Mourning 285
  30. appendix Catalogue of the Works of Herbert Howells 309
  31. Bibliography 347
  32. Index of Works by Herbert Howells 353
  33. General Index 356
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782041849-019

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. List of Illustrations ix
  4. List of Musical Examples x
  5. List of Tables xv
  6. List of Contributors xvi
  7. Foreword xviii
  8. Acknowledgements xix
  9. Introduction : Paradox of an Establishment Composer 1
  10. Part I Howells the Stylist
  11. 1 ‘In matters of art friendship should not count’: Stanford and Howells 9
  12. 2 Howells and Counterpoint 22
  13. 3 Window on a Complex Style: Six Pieces for Organ 37
  14. PART II Howells the Vocal Composer
  15. 4 ‘Hidden Artifi ce’: Howells as Song- Writer 61
  16. 5 A ‘Wholly New Chapter’ in Service Music: Collegium regale and the Gloucester Service 86
  17. 6 Howells’s Use of the Melisma: Word Setting in His Songs and Choral Music 100
  18. Part III Howells the Instrumental Composer
  19. 7 ‘From “Merry- Eye” to Paradise’: Th e Early Orchestral Music of Herbert Howells 117
  20. 8 Lost, Remembered, Mislaid, Rewritten: A Documentary Study of In Gloucestershire 139
  21. 9 Style and Structure in the Oboe Sonata and Clarinet Sonata 153
  22. Part IV Howells the Modern
  23. 10 ‘Tunes all the way’? Romantic Modernism and the Piano Concertos of Herbert Howells 169
  24. 11 ‘I am a “modern” in this, but a Britisher too’: Howells and the Phantasy 185
  25. 12 Austerity, Diffi culty and Retrospection: Th e Late Style of Herbert Howells 222
  26. Part V Howells in Mourning
  27. 13 In modo elegiaco : Howells and the Sarabande 239
  28. 14 On Hermeneutics in Howells: Some Th oughts on Interpreting His Cello Concerto 274
  29. 15 Musical Cenotaph: Howells’s Hymnus paradisi and Sites of Mourning 285
  30. appendix Catalogue of the Works of Herbert Howells 309
  31. Bibliography 347
  32. Index of Works by Herbert Howells 353
  33. General Index 356
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 9.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781782041849-019/html?licenseType=restricted&srsltid=AfmBOopKDvmt5KNOiuFm4pQYPJJDNIlTACiMZFy8zL60RujJ9gZRZMZg
Scroll to top button