I’m thrilled to have received a new organ work by Phillip Cooke, Professor of Composition at Aberdeen University. Here it is (from a quick live run-through yesterday)…
Composer’s Note…
Dialogue takes the ‘Sanctus’ of my 2017 work Missa Sancti Albanus as the source for a spirited exploration of the material and its possibilities on the organ. It largely follows the shape of the original but expands on each section aiming to realise the inherent potential of the music therein. The main deviation is at the end of the work, where the affirming ending of the Sanctus is replaced with a quiet dissipation of the dialogue between voices and musical material. PAC
A 2022 profile I wrote on Cooke’s music is available HERE.
Lennox Berkeley’s majestic Toccata from his Three Pieces opens with mysterious and wild figurations, quite unlike any other organ toccata. It goes on to incorporate dance elements and, after a more reflective contrapuntal section in the middle, returns to the open arabesques with greater force.
I recently tried an experiment. I downloaded a metronome app that allowed me to use presets and programmed it for the various tempos in Herbert Howells’ 1940 ‘Paean’ for organ. I then practised a lot, recorded a performance, and posted it online. This blog is a reflection on what I did and some of the comments shared on social media.
I’ve always wondered why all the Paean performances I’ve ever heard have been below the marked tempo. The initial marking of crochet = 144 is particularly notable, so much so that Stephen Cleobury challenged the composer on it and was surprised when Howells asked him to stick to the notated speeds. This was confirmed by Tom Winpenny and also comes up in an interview with Cleobury in The Diapason: ‘I once asked [Howells] if he really expected us to play it that fast and he said he did’ (interview with Lorraine Brugh, June 5th 2018).
Overall there are eight metronome markings.
Allegro sempre brioso, crochet = 144 meno mosso, crochet = 112 (77%) poco a poco più animato, crochet = 126 (88%) più moderato, deciso, crochet = 96 (66%) più animato, crochet = 112 (77%) a tempo, crochet = 132 (92%) Vivo assai, crochet = 144 (100%) Largamente, crochet = 96 (66%)
Clearly how we interpret the opening marking will determine the whole character of the piece. Allegro sempre brioso: Cheerful or brisk (but commonly interpreted as lively, fast), always with spirit or vigour. If we’re going to reduce that initial tempo, for whatever reason, the other sections need to be reduced within the same ratio. Again, the majority of performances that I’ve heard don’t do this. Paean is often described as a toccata, but I think it’s important to recognise that genre-wise it’s perhaps closer to a scherzo. And remember, Howells’ Toccatina (1921) for the piano is very light indeed, as is Dalby’s Toccata (1959).
Paean was written as a standalone piece and intended as a private gift to Herbert Sumsion in May 1940. I’ve detailed in my blog on the Saraband how it was Sumsion who dragged Howells out of Twigworth Church after days of refusing to leave following the burial of his son Michael in 1935. It was only after Sumsion persuaded Howells to release the score of Hymnus Paradisi for the 1950 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, that he also managed to get Howells to agree to the publication of the Paean, which was then incorporated into the Six Pieces of 1953. Paean was written at a time when Howells was suffering from considerable depression as a prolonged period of mourning was intensified by the outbreak of the Second World War. The safety of his remaining family was a constant topic in letters of this period. A doctor friend of mine, James Betteridge-Sorby, also pointed out that Howells’ Graves disease might have had an ongoing musical impact (symptoms include nervousness, irritability and trouble sleeping).
I would therefore characterise Paean as a piece which focuses on that anxiety, the tension of a man who was depressed and frightened. At 144 bpm it’s breathless, impulsive, anxious – and not always pleasant. The prolonged pedal point at the start – a swirling mass based on a combination of minor 9th sonorities and pentatonic figurations – ultimately leads to the characteristic fanfare motif, an outburst that interrupts the piece with its sudden rest, offbeat marcato accents, jarring ff dynamic and unexpected dissonance. The reduction in dynamic that follows introduces a highly fragmentary section, where the smooth long lines of the opening seem a world away. It’s worth pondering whether the climax points in the remaining pages provide any sort of resolution, or simply more violence. Certainly, the ‘Solo Reeds’ fanfare of the final page is often played in a highly triumphant manner, but in a faster and stricter performance, that gesture becomes an unwelcome interruption – the bright D major of the held resolution before it is shattered by the very sudden introduction of the dissonant fragmented fanfare – fff.
That fanfare:
This tonal doubt reinforces a sense of the bittersweet. How do we really feel about the bright D major in the midst of War? As James Davy has pointed out, Paean gives us a very different vision to that of Howells’ Third Rhapsody, supposedly written amidst the Zeppelin raids in York during the First World War.
For those still struggling with the speed, and I would include myself within this after years of playing the piece at about 80% of the marked tempos (including live on Radio 4!), I would highlight an important comparison. If we consider aspects of the Paean – its wartime composition during a period of mourning, its ultra-fast markings, its scherzo-like mercurial quality, its modal d minor tonality, its long legato lines etc. etc. – it has a lot in common with another organ work: Maurice Duruflé’s Prélude on the name of Jehan Alain (op.7 – 1942). Howells’ love of French music (and particularly the piano works of Ravel and Debussy) is well documented, but we rarely get organists making the same connections. Certainly, the ultra-legato touch required for the Duruflé is essential for the Howells, where the first four pages+ are one long paragraph, leading to the fanfare (meno mosso). It’s also VERY fast: minim = 88 (ie. each of the dotted crochets is 176) – but we rarely get slow performances.
The Duruflé performance here is by John Scott at St Paul’s Cathedral, one of the largest acoustics in the UK. Note the clarity and how little he’s slowed down for the acoustic. This is often the excuse for slower performances in the UK and, of course, the acoustic does need to be taken into account to an extent, but it does leave me wondering why under-tempo performances of British music like Paean are so common when it seems much rarer to hear slow Duruflé, to take one French example. I suspect Howells’ frequent appearance on voluntary lists has something to do with it, where the practice time available/required for virtuoso performances is rare. There are also a larger number of amateur performances in the UK. The Paean is perceived by some as voluntary music, in the same way that the Duruflé Prélude is perceived as [predominantly] a concert work.
It’s also difficult to perform the Paean at the marked tempos if the action can’t keep up and this is the problem I come up against most. There are also issues with over-registration where the opening becomes so heavy (particularly with reeds and 16’ stops) that the player is forced to put on the brakes (note – full swell doesn’t appear until the third page and that’s only a particular effect during the ‘p’ section).
Howells liked to describe various organ pieces as ‘getting away from the church’ – an institution that he had a real love/hate relationship with, and it makes you wonder about the meaning of the title. Howells’ organ works, with the notable exception of the Psalm Preludes, are predominantly secular ones. A priest friend, Laurence Price, commented, ‘I wonder if Howells was thinking of a lesser-known meaning of the word Paean – a war chant sung to galvanise troops before an attack? You see it in classical authors like Xenophon.’ This is particularly interesting given Howells’ wartime context and extensive use of fanfares: “At length the opposing lines were not three or four stadia apart, and then the Greeks struck up the paean and began to advance against the enemy.” (Xenophon’s Anabasis 1.18.17).
Overall, I think Adam Begley hit the nail on the head when he described Howells’ metronome markings as ‘a reality check’. Anthony Gritten has highlighted the important distinction between flow and speed, and the frequent need to see metronome markings in a broader range – i.e. 72 would mean 64-80, rather than just 70-76. ‘It’s all in the affect: somebody reminded me the other day that adagio is not simply a numerical speed but a way of playing’. Personally, I’ve come to look at the Paean in a completely different light, although it took some time to get the tradition of slower performances out of my head. I feel it’s revealed ‘a way of playing’ the Paean that I hadn’t considered before – even if I slow down a bit in future. It’s predominantly about mood.
I wonder at what [reduced] speed does the piece cease to be Howells’ Paean?
Dr Jonathan Clinch returns to Beverley to consider how we listen to British music – at a time when the very notion and identity of Britishness is a divisive topic. Drawing on ideas from Charles Stanford in his centenary year, Jonathan will outline new ways of enjoying what we know and love, as well as exploring the unknown – taking in music familiar and obscure from across the festival programme.
Herbert Howells’ Paean for organ (written in May 1940) has notoriously fast metronome markings, which few organists follow. As an experiment, I’ve practised A LOT and tried to follow them…
The recording was made using the 2010 Metzler organ of the Annakirche in Düren (in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany), sampled by Piotr Grabowski.
Jonathan’s book chapter on issues in the performance of music by Ralph Vaughan Williams is out now.
Clinch, Jonathan. “Performance.” Chapter. In Vaughan Williams in Context, edited by Julian Onderdonk and Ceri Owen, 86–92. Composers in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Abstract
‘You can’t place too much store on what’s written down’ (conductor Martyn Brabbins, interviewed in September 2020). This chapter highlights performance issues and philosophies that have arisen from conducting the music of Vaughan Williams. As Hugh Cobbe has noted, ‘the manuscript was merely the first stage for Vaughan Williams’, but for those proceeding beyond that stage, his scores make significant interpretational demands. This is partly due to Vaughan Williams’s (arguably quite generous) attitude to performers, and particularly the agency that his scores give to musicians to make their own choices. Some of the issues raised by Sir Adrian Boult in his correspondence with Vaughan Williams are used as a starting point for interviews with present-day conductors: Martyn Brabbins, Sir Andrew Davis, David Lloyd Jones, Sir Roger Norrington, Christopher Seaman, and John Wilson. Performance for all the musicians interviewed here is about the agency given to performers to explore the ‘inner workings that are often hidden’, the ‘kernel’, and their ‘instinctive reaction’, a position that contrasts greatly with the far more prescriptive notation of other British composers such as Elgar or Britten.
Around this point in Holy Week, organists around the world will be searching for their copies of Herbert Howells’ Six Pieces for organ. The second of these — Saraband (For the morning of Easter) — is very popular and this year I’ve got my copy out again, at the request of a conductor friend, Hilary Davan Wetton. The resulting recording is below and I’ve posted some history and thoughts on performance too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Howells and the Saraband recently. There’s a book chapter by Graham Barber on the topic in The Music of Herbert Howells. It’s a genre he repeatedly came back to and it’s a central part of his Stabat Mater (1965), which he referred to as ‘a series of sarabands’. In that piece, there’s a strong influence of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms and the sense of ritual pervades all of Howells’ late masterpiece. He generally equated the saraband with mourning and there’s a long history of compositional precedents for Good Friday, take for example, the final chorus of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, ‘Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder’ (We sit down in tears).
When Howells was writing the Six Pieces, he was particularly close to the dedicatee, Herbert ‘John’ Sumsion. Following the burial of Michael, Howells’ nine-year-old son, it was Sumsion who dragged Howells out of the church at Twigworth after several weeks of refusing to leave. The Howells family stayed with the Sumsions that Christmas and frequently thereafter.
Howells’ Gloucester roots are well known, but of course, the area now came to represent a tremendous loss. He turned to composition as a way of dealing with his grief, and pieces like Hymnus Paradisi, the Cello Concerto, the Psalm Preludes (set two) and the Six Pieces, all date from this period. The Six Pieces weren’t intended as a set, and when they were first pulled together for possible publication they were marked ‘Five Pieces’ – the Saraband (In Modo Elegiaco) was added later. They were then published in 1953.
It’s possible to draw Gloucester links to most of the pieces. The first to be written was the Fugue, Chorale and Epilogue (dated 16 December 1939 – which contradicts the published score). It is a peculiar form, but there is a precedent in the ‘Chorale and Fugue’ which ends the first organ sonata, which he wrote at Gloucester in 1911. This was inspired by the final movement of the first sonata of Basil Harwood. Howells saw the fugue form as particularly personal (possibly due to the volume of counterpoint teaching he did) and ‘his’ movement in Lambert’s Clavichord is a fugue.
Next came ‘Master Tallis’s testament’ which he considered to be ‘a footnote’ to Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, the premiere of which at Gloucester in 1910 had convinced him to become a composer (rather than a pianist). Next came the Paean with its incredibly fast metronome marking. It seems to have been sketched concurrently with the ‘Sanctus’ of Hymnus Paradisi. The Preludio ‘Sine Nomine’ followed and might look back to the improvisational ‘Sine Nomine’ for orchestra, soloists and chorus that was premiered there at the Three Choirs Festival in 1922.
The two sarabands were originally a pair: one for Good Friday (in modo elegiaco) and one for Easter morning. Of course, Easter was a highly problematic time for Howells after Michael’s death. Ursula said that he desperately wanted to believe in the Resurrection and the hope of being reunited with his lost son, but simply couldn’t. The manuscripts show that Howells revised the ending of his Easter Saraband for publication. HH likely had Vaughan Williams’ Job in his mind when writing the piece – particularly the ‘Saraband of the Sons of God’.
Several years ago I discussed the Six Pieces with Dr John Birch, former professor of organ at the Royal College of Music and close friend of Howells. He gave the first performance of the Partita (with its Sarabande for the 12th day of any October – RVW’s birthday). He was very clear about the need for performances to project ‘a strong sense of the dance’, by which he meant a strict tempo and the customary accent on the second beat. ‘So many Howells performances aren’t rhythmic enough’. I’ve demonstrated a ‘strict’ performance below.
Howells’ tempos are often a source of confusion. They were frequently conceived with a very specific acoustic and set of performing forces in mind and later in his career there was pressure from his publisher to include more of them (it was seen as unprofessional by that stage to not put them in). Several people (including Dr Birch) have told me that Howells never owned a metronome himself. We know that David Willcocks wrote very different tempo markings into the Stabat Mater (and Howells worked closely with Willcocks on the score), which were then used as the basis for David Hill’s recent recording with the Bach Choir. In general, these markings were too slow. However, there are examples of the opposite too and I was particularly moved by David Briggs’ recent recording of the Rhapsody no.1, which comes in at around two minutes longer than any other commercial recording. So experimenting with tempo is particularly important.
You can hear a recording of my practice on the Saraband (For the morning of Easter) above and I’d mention two performance aspects that I think are important.
1 – To maintain the strictness to establish ‘the dance’ that Dr Birch was after, I’ve had to cut many of Howells’ phrases short. In a big acoustic, you simply can’t hear the phrase structure if you follow all of Howells’ rhythmic values. Of course, choirs are very used to cutting quavers or crochets off here and there.
2 – I’ve tried to stick to Howells’ tempo markings. Most performances of this piece are a bit slower in the outer sections and considerably slower in the middle section. In contrast, the final Largamente is often missing the necessary ‘expansiveness’. When I worked on the piano works, Hilary Macnamara stressed to me how ‘driven’ Herbert Howells’ playing was. Of course, the Saraband is at the centre of the piano sonatina he wrote for her, and recording this Easter saraband, I thought of her playing too.
The recording was made in one take using the Metzler organ sample set of Düren Church.
I’m delighted to join the board of trustees for Multitude of Voyces – the charity behind the recent ‘Anthology of Sacred Music by Women Composers’, spearheaded by their Founding Director, Louise Stewart. Multitude of Voyces specialises in supporting underrepresented and marginalised communities through the creative use of music and words. Their educational resources are used widely in schools, universities, community choirs, churches and cathedrals around the world.
Jonathan Clinch 