A taste of Herbert

 Herbert Howells is one of those composers you really need to spend time with.  He trained as an organist, and went on to study composition at the Royal College of Music with Charles Stanford.

My encounters with Howells go back to the early-1990s, when I first heard the Communion Service from his Collegium Regale setting.  This was written for Kings College, Cambridge, and published after WWII.  And, of course, I heard a good chunk of the Christmas pieces at various carols services.  I have always been struck by the expansiveness of Howells's treatment of texture, and the way everything is crafted to fit voices and instruments.

As a music undergraduate I had limited access to instruments with the full range of registration aids necessary to perform Howells's organ music.  This hasn't deterred me from learning a few pieces, and coaching up a regristrant!

In my final year recital I did have access to a large, properly-equipped instrument, so I included a small rarity as part of the programme.  Here is the second movement of Howells's Organ Sonata.