Herbert Howells: A Flourish for Bidding for organ (1968)

I was looking at works by Herbert Howells that reach their half-centenary in 2019.  I consulted the catalogue included in The Music of Herbert Howells (ed. Cooke and Maw, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2013) to see what music was written during that year. Included in the works list, was A Flourish for Bidding (H.H.326) for organ. It was not until I began further investigation that I discovered that this is an error. In fact, it was written the previous year, 1968. My primary source for this revised date is Gillian Widdicombe’s article the Musical Times (November 1968) where she describes the circumstances of premiere in some detail.

Other music that Howells was working on at this time included the Coventry Mass and a couple of hymn tunes: ‘In Manus Tuas’ and ‘Norfolk’.

I have been aware of Herbert Howells short celebratory piece for organ, Flourish for a Bidding for several years. However, I misunderstood its genesis. I assumed that it somehow referred to a ‘bidding prayer’ as used in church. In other words, an invitation from the vicar to his congregation to join in prayer. I was wrong. This attractive piece was completed on 29 August 1968 and was presented at an auction to raise money for the Royal College of Organists [RCO] Centenary Fund, hence ‘bidding’. Between the years 1958-1960 Howells was President of the RCO and remained involved, so he would have been the ideal person to approach for a new work, even if it was deemed to be ephemeral. Novello paid the princely sum of £21.00 for the manuscript. The story of the other bids in this auction may be the subject of a further post.

George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987) gave the first performance of the Flourish on 28 September 1968 at the Royal College of Organists which were at that time based in Kensington Gore.  Thalben-Ball was five years shy of the 50^th anniversary of his appointment to the post of Organist at Temple Church. He was currently City Organist of Birmingham and was still working at the BBC. In 1968 he married his second wife, Jennifer Bate. He was aged 72 years. 

The organ played at the RCO was the then new three-manual Messrs William Hill and Son and Norman & Beard Ltd instrument commissioned on 7 October 1967. It is interesting that this instrument was not typical of the design usually required for Howells’s music. It had been influenced by the Organ Reform principles which was inspired by the ‘Back to Bach and Baroque’ movement.  Most of Howells’s organ works are designed for the more romantic sounding ‘orchestral’ organ.

Despite the composer having a nine-year interregnum in writing organ music he was to have two new works performed over a period of three days: on 25 September, John Birch played Howells’s Rhapsody No.4 at Westminster Abbey. This work had been composed during April 1958 and was later published together with the Prelude: ‘De Profundis’ by Novello in 1983.

The Flourish is much less ‘romantic’ in sound than Howells earlier organ ‘Rhapsodies’ and Psalm Tune Preludes and relies on jerky, ‘declamatory’ phrases to provide the momentum. It is typically in ternary form, with the two ‘sections’ repeated several times. It opens with an ‘allegro energico’ presenting a powerful paean of praise. The opening bar gives the basic germ of much of the piece.  There is a good balance here between three-part counterpoint and incisive chords played over a busy pedal part.   The piece begins in 3/4 metre but frequently interposes bars of 2/4 time. Each section is presented around a rapidly modulating tonal centre beginning on A minor and ending in C major. The final chord may be a bit of a cliché: C major with the added 7^th (B natural), but it is effective. Robin Wells (Musical Times, August 1987) has noted that the musical style is like the Partita (1972) and the Epilogue (1974). Several of the ideas in the Flourish were to reappear in this Partita for organ composed in 1971 for the then Prime Minister Edward Heath.

A Flourish for Bidding was included in Three Pieces, published by Novello in 1987. The other two works were ‘Intrata No.2’ and ‘St Louis comes to Clifton.’ It was edited by Robin Wells.

A good recording of this work, played by Adrian Partington, was issued on The Organ Music of Herbert Howells Vol 3 - The Organ of Winchester Cathedral the Priory Label (PRCD 547) in 1998. This track has been uploaded to YouTube.