Herbert Howells's Hymnus Paradisi (Hymn of Paradise, 1938/1950) is the most personal and most celebrated British choral work of the 20th century. Composed in private grief after the sudden death of his nine-year-old son Michael, kept hidden for fifteen years, and finally premiered at the 1950 Three Choirs Festival, it is aone of the supreme expressions of what it means to entrust unbearable loss to the promises of Scripture.
The Death of Michael Howells
Michael Howells died on 2 September 1935 from spinal meningitis. He was nine years old. Herbert Howells, who had already shown himself to be one of England's most gifted composers, was devastated. He had been working on a violin concerto; he abandoned it. Instead, he began composing what would become Hymnus Paradisi, drawing on texts from the Mass for the Dead, the Anglican Burial Service, the Psalms, and the Book of Revelation. He completed the score in 1938 but refused to allow it to be performed. It was, he said, too private - a letter to Michael, not a concert piece.
The 1950 Premiere
At the urging of his close friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, Howells agreed to allow the premiere at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in September 1950 - fifteen years after Michael's death. The premiere under Herbert Sumsion was immediately recognized as an event of significance. Howells himself was present but could not conduct. The audience - which included many who knew of the work's origins - responded with the kind of silence that follows music of extraordinary intimacy. Its reputation was established at once.
Texts and Biblical Sources
The work is in six movements, drawing on a composite of texts:
Movement I: The Sanctus from the Mass and Psalm 121:1 ('I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills').
Movement II: 'I heard a voice from heaven' (Revelation 14:13) - 'Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours.'
Movement III: Psalm 23, set with extraordinary gentleness: 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.'
Movement IV: 'Holy is the true light' - a text from the Salisbury Diurnal, describing the peace of the blessed in terms of light.
Movement V: Psalm 121 and the Requiem aeternam (Grant them eternal rest, O Lord).
Movement VI: Revelation 7:14-17 - the great vision of the redeemed before the throne: 'They are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple... and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'
Musical Character
Howells's musical language is rooted in the English cathedral tradition: extended modality, lush chromatic harmony influenced by Ravel and early Stravinsky, and a sensitivity to the acoustic resonance of gothic stone buildings. The vocal writing for soprano and baritone soloists and mixed chorus is of exceptional beauty, balanced between harmonic opulence and moments of stark, bare simplicity. The orchestral writing is luminous throughout - the shimmering strings and high woodwinds that recur throughout the score suggest light filtering through colored glass rather than direct illumination.
Psalm 23 in Movement III is set with a simplicity that contrasts with the surrounding harmonic richness: the melody is almost chant-like, as if Howells were deliberately stripping away sophistication to reach the directness of a child's trust. It is impossible to hear this setting without awareness of its context - a father setting the shepherd psalm for his dead son.
Theological Dimensions
The work's theological coherence is provided by Revelation 7:14-17, which Howells sets in the climactic final movement. The passage describes those who 'have come out of the great tribulation' standing before the throne of God, sheltered by his presence, led to springs of living water, with every tear wiped from their eyes. For a grieving father, this vision of a child standing before God's throne, beyond the reach of any further harm, is what faith looks like at its most costly and most confident. Howells does not argue for this hope; he inhabits it musically, as if the act of composing were itself a form of prayer.
Legacy
Hymnus Paradisi stands alongside Brahms's German Requiem and Britten's War Requiem as one of the definitive 20th-century works addressing death through the lens of Christian hope. It is performed regularly at Three Choirs Festival, the BBC Proms, and by major choral societies throughout Britain and North America. Its intimacy and its specific origin story - a father's grief, a son's death, fifteen years of private holding - give it a quality of authenticity that purely liturgical works often lack. It is not music about death in general; it is music about one death, offered to God, and finding through that offering a wider consolation.