St John's Magnificat

includes premiere recordings ST JOHN’S MAGNIFICAT CHORAL WORKS BY Herbert Howells Choir of St John’s College,Cambridge ANDREW NETHSINGHA CHAN 10587 Herbert Howells (1892 –1983) St John’s Magnificat © Clive Barda / ArenaPAL 1 A Sequence for St Michael 10:02 Pablo Strong tenor 2 By the Waters of Babylon* 10:11 3 A Spotless Rose 3:24 Gareth John baritone Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (Gloucester Service) 11:26 4 Magnificat 6:50 5 Nunc Dimittis 4:31 premiere recording 6 Psalm 142 4:14 premiere recording 7 A Grace for 10 Downing Street 2:29 Dominic Kraemer baritone Francis Williams tenor Herbert Howells 3 8 One Thing Have I Desired 5:38 9 Like as the Hart 5:50 The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge Thomas Mullock treble Director of Music Andrew Nethsingha Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis Senior Organ Scholar Timothy Ravalde (Collegium Sancti Johannis Cantabrigiense) 7:33 10 Magnificat 4:26 treble counter-tenor tenor bass 11 Nunc Dimittis 3:03 Patrick Baldwin Dominic Collingwood Samuel Furness George Dye Robert Baldwin Oliver Hunt Nicholas Morell Gareth John Ethan Bamber Leo Tomita Bradley Smith Tristan Hambleton 12 Salve Regina 4:44 Alexander Bower-Brown Tom Verney Pablo Strong Dominic Kraemer Thomas Last treble Edward Campbell Francis Williams Basil McDonald Harry Cheatle Henry Neill 13 Te Deum (Collegium Regale) 9:01 Theodore Day Julius Foo TT 75:33 Benjamin Glass * Peter Hicks Paul Whelan baritone William Jackson David Adams violin* Thomas Last Alice Neary cello* Thomas Mullock George Smith Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge Justin Stollery Andrew Nethsingha Thomas Williams 4 5 years was funded by the Carnegie UK Trust ‘48’ in concerts at St John’s. The other, Martin Howells: to help Richard Terry edit Tudor church music Charlesworth, was President of the College; St John’s Magnificat at Westminster Cathedral. This experience he was a classicist, and also a fine pianist also had a profound influence on his future with whom Howells often played duets. The name of Herbert Howells may be more remember that in 1943 Howells was fifty-one work. Third, and perhaps most important of Howells, therefore, had the best of all immediately associated with King’s College, years old and his taking this new direction all, was the fact that these brief years spent worlds during this extraordinary four-year Cambridge because of his Collegium Regale at the height of his maturity has all the in the academic hothouse of Cambridge were interlude. Well aware that his organ playing settings, and with Gloucester Cathedral hallmarks of a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion. perhaps the happiest of Howells’s life. was extremely rusty, he spent a good deal because of his personal associations from In reality, he had simply found his medium. Howells spent four days a week in of time practising, usually early on Sunday childhood. But it was his time as acting After the debacle surrounding the first Cambridge, leaving London on a Thursday and mornings. His first day at the college, organist at St John’s College, Cambridge performance of his Second Piano Concerto returning on Monday. His suite of rooms was 3 October 1941, was spent almost entirely in (1941–45), whilst Robin Orr was away on in 1925 he had lost all his confidence. The H1 on the first floor of H staircase in Second the organ loft. On 9 December that same year active service in the RAF during the second enthusiastic reception of this new phase Court, which had the rare privilege at the he wrote to Julius Harrison, saying: World War, that led Dean Milner-White, of composition gave him a renewed self- time of a private bathroom. He was given a …you’re not the only musical Methuselah recently translated to the Deanery at York, to confidence which in turn fed his creativity. Fellowship in addition to his remuneration, crawling up organ loft steps these days, describe Howells as having opened ‘a wholly There are, however, various important and free meals in Hall. He loved this aspect or persuading leg-muscles to recall their new chapter in Service, perhaps in Church, points to consider here. First, as this of college life in particular, seeking to learn pedalling acts of 20 or 30 years ago, music’. Milner-White was Dean of King’s recording amply demonstrates, Howells had from whichever Don was sitting next to or making the seat of his trousers 50% College when in 1943 he invited Howells and been writing church music all his life, so it him about the latest academic research in more shiny than they were before the Patrick Hadley to tea with Boris Ord. Their was really the concentration on this genre whichever field he happened to work. Howells war interfered with the decencies of our discussion turned to settings of the Te Deum which was new. Second, he had not been would then use this knowledge as the basis careers. and Milner-White laid a guinea on the table actively involved in church music since 1917 of his Monday morning lecture at the Royal Of course, standards were not then as as a kind of ‘bet’ – perhaps more accurately a when he spent the period from mid-February College of Music, which Parry had instituted they are now, and the choir at St John’s was challenge – to the two composers to produce to mid-May as assistant organist to Walter to broaden the minds of the students, the a fairly run-of-the-mill affair which sang only a new setting. Hadley, later to become Alcock at Salisbury Cathedral. Serious lecture being on any subject other than at weekends. There were ‘professional’ lay Professor of Music at Cambridge, did not take illness forced his resignation and a complete music. Howells made close friendships with clerks who sang with such stentorian tone the bait, but Howells did, and the rest, as the withdrawal from the musical scene for two distinguished Fellows of St John’s. The that the choral scholars who sang alongside phrase goes, is history. It is a remarkable some months (he had initially been given six first was Max Newman, a mathematician them (known as ‘choral students’ at St John’s) story given Howells’s concentration on music months to live). A guinea pig for ground- working on code-breaking at Bletchley often felt completely superfluous. Howells’s for church services after this. It is as if he breaking radium treatment, he was soon able Park; he was also a remarkable amateur organ voluntaries are also a matter of some had suddenly found his vocation. One must to take up light work, and for the next three musician who played the whole of Bach’s debate, but the story goes that Howells never 6 7 played a piece of printed music in his Te Deum (Collegium Regale) Te Deum: my favourite moments being ‘We ‘Anthems in Time of War’, a series title which entire time at Cambridge, improvising The only work recorded here which was therefore pray thee’, ‘Vouchsafe O Lord’, was eventually dropped in favour of the more at every service. What a crying shame actually written during the time Howells & the cadence at ‘Also the Holy Ghost prosaic Four Anthems, which we know today that there is no recording of any of these spent at St John’s was the Collegium the comforter’ – it is always so effective as ‘O Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem’, ‘We performances! How interesting it would be Regale Te Deum referred to earlier. The nice when you allow yourself the rare luxury of have heard with our ears’, ‘Let God Arise’ and to know to what extent the style of his coincidence was that his close friend Harold a dominant seventh or ninth. I gather the ‘Like as the Hart’. Psalm Preludes and Rhapsodies grew out Darke was just down the road at King’s, choir like it: in fact I heard the youngest of his ability to improvise in this vein. standing in for Boris Ord who, like Robin Orr, choral scholar describe it as ‘wizard’, than Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis According to the late John Williams, a was also away on active service. There was which what higher praise could you desire? (Gloucester Service) choral student during Howells’s time, thus a well-worn path trodden between the The first setting of the evening canticles to Howells’s keyboard technique was ‘rather two colleges situated only a few hundred Like as the Hart follow the Collegium Regale settings of 1945 like the technique you use for playing yards apart, and the feelings Howells held The anthem in this programme written was, perhaps unsurprisingly, that dedicated Couperin, without thumbs, in a way – for King’s – its extraordinary beauty, its closest to Howells’s Cambridge period is ‘Like to Howells’s ‘own’ Cathedral at Gloucester, lumpy’. Williams also noted that Howells’s acoustic and fine choir directed by his old as the Hart desireth the waterbrooks’. This where he had had so many of his formative conducting style was ‘meticulous, precise friend – were burned into his consciousness must be Howells’s best-loved piece of church musical experiences and had been an and too fussy. He tried to beat every note’. and were probably the mental trigger for his music. There are various reasons for this. ‘articled’ pupil to Herbert Brewer along with So we build up a picture of Howells at subsequent focus on dedications to people Much of Howells’s choral music is difficult Ivor Gurney and Ivor Novello. Howells picks up this time, dressed, according to Sir John and places.

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