Harvey is a composer whose music has always appealed to me, not in sort of ‘take-it-to-my-heart’ kind of way, but more that my ears have been tickled by something new, something different and something original. I don’t really know half of the works he has composed, and certainly nothing in the last five years but there are certain key works from throughout his career that are as impressive and as exciting as anything I’ve heard from a British composer in the last forty years.

For those of you unfamiliar with Harvey, he was born in Warwickshire in 1939 made his way to Cambridge, Princeton and then to Paris (IRCAM) with Boulez in the early 1980s. He has written for many of the world’s leading orchestras and performers, has had numerous works recorded or broadcast, had festivals devoted to his music across the world and held prestigious academic posts both in the UK and the US. And he has an excellent moustache (well he does in the promo photos of him I have in front of me).

Some of his most well known works are his short choral pieces, and I was interested to see that the BBC Singers under David Hill will be giving an early evening concert of Harvey’s choral music as part of the day. Alongside the New London Chamber Choir pieces Forms of Emptiness and Ashes Dance Back (which will receive its London Premiere), the National Youth Choir commission How could the soul no take flight and the German commission Marahi sit two small church anthems that are probably Harvey’s most performed works – I love the Lord and Come Holy Ghost. These two works date from reasonably early in Harvey’s choral output (1976 and 1984 respectively) and represent the high point of his collaboration with Martin Neary at Winchester Cathedral. Come Holy Ghost in particular is a very successful work moulding together the ancient and the modern with plainchant and long aleatoric (free time) sections vying for attention. For my mind this work is a great example of what modern choral music should be – interesting, performable, thought-provoking and not too long. It is a bit of a shame that the BBC Singers aren’t performing his work The Angels which was commissioned for the 1994 Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge – not only is it quite beautiful and restrained, but it’s also quite creepy, which I like.

Actually the work of Jonathan Harvey’s that I most admire isn’t actually a choral or church piece, but rather the distillation of the entire cathedral tradition – his piece for quadraphonic tape (yes, I don’t know what that is either) Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980). This electronic piece is based entirely on the overtones of the great tenor bell of Winchester Cathedral and the treble voice of a chorister (actually his son), some of the sound manipulations are astonishing, and amongst the usual splicing and dicing that you find in electronic music you find something quite spine-tingling and unquantifiable – the mark of a truly great composer.

PAC

To hear a recording of Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, click here.

PAC

A Spotless Rose is one of Howells’s most well-known and enduring works, a tender, if somewhat slight unaccompanied choral piece that encompasses much of Howells’s early choral writing and points towards the glories of Collegium Regale and beyond. It is beautiful yet understated, succinct yet not laconic, poised but not mannerist – a triumph of poignant and powerful word setting. And apparently he wrote it in Gloucester overlooking the train station – which makes it all the more impressive – I can’t imagine much creative inspiration stemming from Gloucester train station. At all.

The piece was written in 1919 and is one of the Three Carol-Anthems, a set which includes the equally melodious Here is the little door and Sing Lullaby, but it is A Spotless Rose that stands out amongst the others. It is a simple setting of the anonymous fifteenth-century poem about Jesus’ birth and the purity of Mary, and the naivety of the words seem to give Howells the springboard to create something that appears the model of simplicity on the surface, but hides a deeper complexity – how many carols written in 1919 move mellifluously between 7 8, 5 4 and 5 8 with the subtle changes of metre emphasising the stresses of the words and Howells’s restrained homophony? The harmony moves seamlessly from a modal E major to the minor (0.27) before returning to the major for the end of the first verse – then the magic happens! The second verse (0.58) has a stunning tenor solo that brings a radiant glow to the music, but the skill is in the accompaniment given by the rest of the choir – understated again, but not a note out of place – again pointing towards similar sections in later works.

Perhaps the most celebrated moment of the piece is the very end, in fact the final cadence – this cadence (on the words “cold winter’s night) is one of Howells’s most sublime and affecting moments and the composer Patrick Hadley famously wrote to Howells saying “I should like, when my time comes, to pass away with that magical cadence.” The cadence itself (2.50)moves from A minor to E major through some wonderfully piquant suspensions and unusual dissonance resolutions, all with a good helping of emotion and ‘feeling’ – it is mature Howells through and through and it is indeed wonderful.

So there you go, a great piece of Christmas music – in fact a great piece of music in general. Next year Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine. Merry Christmas.

PAC

(to buy this recording, Polyphony, Hyperion, click here)

 The Two Trees (2011) (mp3)

 Evening Service (2009) (mp3)

Not much comment necessary I suppose. A bad hair day, but fun nontheless.