Howells, Herbert (1892 - 1983)

[Cockney Sparrow]

Anyone listen to BBC R4 yesterday? Ed Balls (yes, husband of Yvette Cooper, ex-shadow Chancellor, Strictly contestant) nominated HH for Matthew Parris' programme great lives. (I've mislaid my smartphone, so it was unexpected bonus to hear this programme from my shirt pocket radio, whilst I was picking blackberries on my allotment plot...)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007bd2

For those sticking with steam radio, it will be repeated Friday 23:00.

[Dave2002]

An interesting programme, though little music. Looking at English church music, as well as religion, from HH's or EB's perspectives was somewhat illuminating, as also the plausible explanation for some of the reasons for composing some of HH's music. I will probably listen to that again - and of course one doesn't have to wait until the Friday repeat unless one only has "steam" radio.

[Serial_Apologist]

An interesting programme, though little music. Looking at English church music, as well as religion, from HH's or EB's perspectives was somewhat illuminating, as also the plausible explanation for some of the reasons for composing some of HH's music. I will probably listen to that again - and of course one doesn't have to wait until the Friday repeat unless one only has "steam" radio.

It is interesting to note the few true religious believers of the modern era who have composed great religious music - or music that convinces us of their faith. In the 20th century I can only really think of two: Lilli Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen, though some might want to include Poulenc, Tavener and the "holy minimalists". Most of the rest who come to mind, such as Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Howells, Finzi and Honegger, were at the most ambivalent about the existence of a god.

I expect this view could attract a "whole host" of people here in disagreement!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This whole host suggests: Webern? Stockhausen? ... Penderecki???

[Serial_Apologist]

This whole host suggests: Webern? Stockhausen? ... Penderecki???

I would say Webern was more a pantheist (nature worshipper) God as immanence, than conventionally religious; Stockhausen closer to the Hindu polyglot of deities than monotheism; and do people really feel Penderecki's religious works to reflect a religious outlook, or someone making favour with the right earthly people at the right time? God seems to be markedly absent to the jews in the gas chambers in the utterly terrifying "Dies Irae" of 1966; and The St Luke Passion hardly comes across as in any way redemptive, does it? I haven't really followed Penderecki's music from the late 1970s. Jonathan Harvey occurs to me as someone who successfully reflected the contradictions between Christianity and the Buddhism he averred himself equally sympathetic towards.

Come to think of it, Schmidt probably was conventionally religious: his "Book of the Seventh Seal" certainly comes across as convincing musically in the way that the Bach Passions do, but Schmdt was a right wing nationalist, and for all ones thoughts about religion one demurs from always equating religion with right wing politics and principles. There don't seem to be any great contemporary composers of music of the RC "theology of liberation" persuasion. Modern church composers either go back to Stanford or have swallowed whole(sale) a diluted version of black American Gosepl music. How about Mahler? He (again) was more into Taoism and nature mysticism than conventional religion per se, and was, understandably at the time, ambivalent to say the least about his Judaic roots. Possibly one could say that Schoenberg ended up as a genunely religious man: the music may be radical but the themes of Moses und Aron and the late psalms fall fair and squarely into theological orthodoxy, albeit with a paradoxical twist at the end of M&A.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

'Old on! You said "religious Music", not "Christian Music". (And I should have added Schoenberg - just as you're right to have mentioned Harvey).

[Gabriel Jackson]

It is interesting to note the few true religious believers of the modern era who have composed great religious music - or music that convinces us of their faith. In the 20th century I can only really think of two: Lilli Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen

Stravinsky?

[Serial_Apologist]

'Old on! You said "religious Music", not "Christian Music". (And I should have added Schoenberg - just as you're right to have mentioned Harvey).

Yes, I really should have qualified "religious" with "monotheistically religious", because of the subordinating way most if not all Western composers incorporate religio-musical practices or observances that would feed into the institutional primacy of concert hall or opera house.

This is more an observation than a criticism by the way. Were all churches to be closed or de-consecrated for other uses, one might still want to listen to or know about religious music, even if for what inheres in it than filtered through the welter of ideological gobbledygook in which it has been cloaked.

[Serial_Apologist]

Stravinsky?

Yes, Stravinsky, definitely! One experiences deep down the religious fervour that informs the Symphony of Psalms, the Mass, the a capella settings of Orthodox texts of 1930, Threni, Canticum Sacrum, the Requiem Canticles, even if one is not quite sure what (beyond classical ideals of beauty, purity and so on) one is identifying with. For me these austere post-Diaghilev era Stravinsky works have more aesthetically in common with Satie's "Socrate", or some self-depriving monastic ideal, than with anything I would associate with mass observance Christianity.

Apologies to all - I really should have engaged brain more before launching into this topic!

[Pulcinella]

Britten? (Genuine question mark!)

Perhaps posts 33 and later could be hived off into another thread, if S_A approved?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Stravinsky?

Ooops! Of course!

And what about Duke Ellington or John Coltrane?

[Serial_Apologist]

Britten? (Genuine question mark!)

Perhaps posts 33 and later could be hived off into another thread, if S_A approved?

I'd be fine with that!

Not one of the great ones, Britten. I find his religious persuasions shaky, if not his sincerity.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Ooops! Of course! And what about Duke Ellington or John Coltrane?

Oh yes, of course - I sang in the chorus - Ellington Sacred Concert (Høybye/Pedersen version) in March this year. Very enjoyable, if out of my usual experience - audience loved it.

Seems like they are using the material in a different version (if it isn't a complete pick and mix) in Prom 54 on 29 August.

[Serial_Apologist]

Ooops! Of course!

And what about Duke Ellington or John Coltrane?

Ooh now you're going to upset some people who don't like hearing jazz on Breakfast!

Duke Ellington has a generational as well as specifically American relation to religion, but jazz people are rather divided as to the musical worth of his religious works. From what I know of them I find them uneven. Ellington successors appreciate the spiritual qualities expressed through his musical means rather than anything presumed by him or anyone else to lie beyond them. John Coltrane on the other hand had a rather Wellsian view of religion, namely that all religions are equally valid inasmuch as they are all pursuing the same goals, just following different pathways. I do actually see John Coltrane as having taken on something of the role of spiritual guru, in the way in which he mentored a whole new generation of Afro-American musicians and saw spiritual liberation as a precondition of social change, and absorbed the turmoil of his time and the suffering of his own community, expressing it in an idiom that became ever more complex, to be dialogically worked through, rather than opting for easier means. The few who have followed his musical path have often themselves grown and been transformed just by virtue of practical musical self-investment into the technicalities of the music and the spirit of fervour underpinning them; but for my part I think this man's vision was much bigger and more inclusive than what passes for religion today in any of the monotheistic traditions. Maybe if we understood it and him better, religion would not today be the problem it has become? A big claim to make tentatively, yes, I know.

[DracoM]

Howells was the subject of the most recent R4 'Great Lives' . Paul Spicer expert witness, Matthew Parris presenter.