From Herbert to Ralph, with affection

Extract

Herbert Howells's debt to Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis is both well known and well documented. I have shown elsewhere how the features of the phrygian mode lead to the use of I–^bII and V–^bVI (sometimes expressed as parallel fifths) in both Vaughan Williams and Howells. There are three particular tributes from Howells to Vaughan Williams that especially bear the stamp of this influence. Two are the paired set Ralph's Pavane and Ralph's Galliard from Howells' Clavichord (published in 1961 but written earlier), a work in which individual pieces are inscribed – as Elgar would say – to ‘my friends pictured within’; the third is Sarahande for the 12th day of any October from the Partita for organ (published in 1971). These three pieces derive some of their features from a Vaughan Williams work written much later than the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis – the ‘Pavane of the Sons of the Morning’ and the ‘Saraband of the Sons of God’ from job (1930): and some features come from John Dowland's Lachrimae (‘Flow my tears, fall from your springs…’, first published in 1600, but written earlier). Howells's use of Renaissance models – Pavane and Galliard pair, elements of Dowland's Lachrimae, and modal features – vividly illustrates Vaughan Williams's remark that he sometimes felt Howells to be the reincarnation of one of the lesser Tudor luminaries.