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DiggHerbert Howells' Requiem
On November 2, 2009, the Trinity Choir performed Requiem by Herbert Howells (1892–1983) as part of its concert Requiem & Remembrance.
Here, Steven Fox, Acting Director of Music at Trinity Wall Street, reflects on what makes this work so powerful:
Requiem is a product of the composer’s feverish creative output after losing his son, Michael, to polio in 1935, at the age of nine. The 1936 Requiem was a canvas for ideas that would be reworked in Howells’ later undisputed choral-orchestral masterpiece, the Hymnus Paradisi. Though Howells altered many of his initial ideas in the Hymnus Paradisi, the earlier Requiem retains an intimacy and an individual, sorrowful voice that the later work partially sacrificed with its large accompaniment. Both the Requiem and the Hymnus Paradisi seem to have been viewed as a private outlet for the composer’s grief, as Howells did not take action for many years to have either of the works published or performed. The Requiem was finally released in 1980.
