FULL HYMNUS PARADISI (Howells) ‘s-Hertogenbosch 2015 Sarah-Jane Brandon, Andrew Staples
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Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Hymnus Paradisi
- Composer: Howells Herbert
- Libretto:
- Venue & Opera Company: Sint-Janskathedraal, 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
- Recorded: November 6, 2015
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Sarah-Jane Brandon, Andrew Staples
- Conductor: Martyn Brabbins
- Orchestra: BBC Symphony Orchestra
- Chorus: Laurens Symfonisch (formerly known as Rotterdam Symphony Chorus)
- Chorus Master: Wiecher Mandemaker
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Laurens Vocaal
- Date Published: 2016
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM
Barber – AGNUS DEI (arr. Adagio for Strings)
Hymnus Paradisi – Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Quote from Wikipedia:
Hymnus Paradisi is a choral work by Herbert Howells for soprano and tenor soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra. The work was inspired in part by the death from polio of his son Michael in 1935. Howells wrote the work from 1936 to 1938, drawing on material from the then-unpublished Requiem of 1932,[1] but then retained the music privately, without public performance. Howells maintained later in life that Ralph Vaughan Williams convinced him to allow the work to be performed publicly at the Three Choirs Festival. However, his former pupil and biographer Paul Spicer contends that Howells first showed the music to Herbert Sumsion, organist of Gloucester Cathedral, who in turn showed it to Gerald Finzi, and that only after these two expressed their enthusiasm did Howells show the music to Vaughan Williams The title ‘Hymnus Paradisi’ was suggested by Sumsion. The work received its successful premiere at the Festival in 1950. The score was published in 1951.
At one time the work was to include a setting of the “Hymnus circa exsequias defuncti” of Prudentius, later set in English as Take him, earth, for cherishing.The opening line, in Latin, instead appears as an epigraph to the published score.
The piece consists of six movements:
Preludio (for orchestra)
Requiem aeternam
The Lord is my shepherd (a setting of Psalm 23)
Sanctus. I will lift up mine eyes (which juxtaposes the Sanctus from the Ordinary of the Mass with Psalm 121)
I heard a voice from heaven (from the Burial Service)
Holy is the true light (from the Salisbury Diurnal, translation by G. H. Palmer)