As a composer of British choral music, Herbert Howells is sometimes considered a follower of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry. Yet the expansively breathed counterpoint, lush orchestral sounds, and impressionistic harmonies in his large choral works, such as the Missa Sabrinensis and the Stabat Mater on this 2005 Chandos compilation, mark him more accurately as a fellow traveler with Ralph Vaughan Williams in the English pastoral movement. (Interestingly, though both men composed works for religious uses, ...
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As a composer of British choral music, Herbert Howells is sometimes considered a follower of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry. Yet the expansively breathed counterpoint, lush orchestral sounds, and impressionistic harmonies in his large choral works, such as the Missa Sabrinensis and the Stabat Mater on this 2005 Chandos compilation, mark him more accurately as a fellow traveler with Ralph Vaughan Williams in the English pastoral movement. (Interestingly, though both men composed works for religious uses, Howells and Vaughan Williams seem to have been agnostics who viewed composing sacred music merely as an opportunity to write glorious works for choir). Recorded in 1994 and 1995 by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, these mystical choral works sound symphonically spacious and almost cosmic in range and depth, quite far removed from any practical ecclesiastical functions. Indeed, the Missa Sabrinensis seems closer in a nearly pantheistic spirit to Vaughan...
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