Good Friday Worship

Join us for a traditional meditative service in the sanctuary or via livestream. The AHCC Sanctuary Choir will present the Herbert Howells Requiem, and Rev. Erica Thompson will bring a spoken meditation.

About the musical work: Written in 1932, it is set for unaccompanied choir and soloists. Rather than have it performed, Howells tucked the work away in his desk. In September 1935 his world was abruptly shattered when his nine-year-old son Michael contracted polio during a family holiday, dying in London three days later. At the suggestion of his daughter Ursula, Howells sought to channel his grief into music, and over the course of the next three years composed much of the large-scale choral work which was eventually to become Hymnus Paradisi, drawing on material from the unpublished Requiem. This new work remained, in Howells’ words, “a personal, almost secret document” until it was first performed in1950. However, the original a cappella Requiem remained unpublished and unperformed until 1980, when the BBC Singers gave the premiere performance, just three years before Howells death.