![Howells: Music For Strings [Richard Hickox ] [Chandos: CHAN 10780 X]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81p7BcAma%2BL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
This concise biography of the distinguished English composer, Herbert Howells, is one of a series called ‘Border Lines’. The common subjects of these books are the various poets, writers and musicians associated with the area of Britain along the borderlands of England and Wales. Among the people covered are A.E. Housman, Bruce Chatwin and Arthur Machin.
The author of the present volume, Paul Spicer, is himself a distinguished musician and was a pupil of Howells at the Royal College of Music when the composer was in his eighties. When I began reading the book, I was impressed by the first chapter in which the author ranges over Howells’ origins, geographical and Celtic influences interwoven with mention of his family and the house and village where he was raised. It introduced its subject in a discursive but clever way, avoiding the biographic tedium of family trees and other boring stuff.
The biography progresses chronologically and takes in his glittering student career at the college under Stanford and where he makes friends with fellow students like Arthur Bliss and Arthur Benjamin, as well as older staff professors like Vaughan Williams. His old childhood friend, Ivor Gurney was also at the college intermittently. Towards the end of his time at college, he develops Grave’s disease, a thyroid condition* which was fatal around 1914 but he was saved by pioneering radium treatment, the first such instance according to Spicer. This scuppers his first job, a position as organist to Salisbury Cathedral but he manages over the next years to compose many fine works, especially the Piano Quartet, the Phantasy String Quartet and the Clarinet Quintet.
Howells’ brilliance becomes undermined by a lack of confidence and a single critic’s outburst at the premiere of his second piano concerto had an effect totally out of proportion to its significance, revealing his excessive sensitivity to criticism. In 1935, his son Michael died of polio and Howells was devastated. His grief eventually led to his masterpiece, Hymnus Paradisi, an outstandingly beautiful choral work first performed in 1950. Two other large scale choral works were to follow: the Missa Sabriensis (The Severn Mass) and the late Stabat Mater. From the end of WW2, there was an outpouring of organ works and settings of the Anglican canticles, the latter today being used liturgically throughout the world on a regular basis. All this time, Howells is teaching at the Royal College, adjudicating and broadcasting. His decline and death are poignantly described. Spicer quotes Howells’ daughter, the actress Ursula Howells extensively at this point.
Spicer is frank about the composer’s human frailties. He was unfaithful to his wife on numerous occasions, and Ursula describes his guilt, although he gets her to meet the ladies involved, possibly for her approval. However, she balances this by saying he was a wonderful and kind father. Spicer also alludes to Howells’ tendency to name-drop. He had a tremendous capacity for friendship. Towards the end of the book, he says that Howells loved to have tea, toast and jam, and that this fact confirmed his view of the composer as a sensualist. This tickled the present reviewer, who is rather partial to these things as well.
*Paul Spicer is a bit muddled about Grave’s disease, not mentioning it is an affliction of the thyroid gland. He also gets the cause of Gerald Finzi’s death wrong: Finzi was suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he visited the sexton’s cottage at Chosen. The children were suffering from chickenpox, not influenza. Finzi caught the infection and developed shingles, which is caused by the same virus. As his immune system was depressed by the lymphatic cancer, the virus then spread to the brain, causing a fatal encephalitis
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 February 2019
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Top international reviews
Amazon Customer
and Spicer goes to great lengths to find that place
Reviewed in the United States on 31 January 2017Verified Purchase
Mezzonora
Very good book. Well written and clear sighted
Reviewed in the United States on 4 April 2016Verified Purchase