A Spotless Rose, for chorus
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A Spotless Rose, for chorus
- Date: 1919
- Composer: Herbert Howells
- Period: Modern (1910-1949)
Review
Though Herbert Howells remained a lifelong devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, his choral music especially has been embraced across the breadth of Christian denominations. His later reputation in Anglican traditions stands largely on the basis of a large number of Service settings for major English choral institutions, as well as funeral compositions and shorter anthems for seasonal use; the shorter anthems have also percolated down into the musical life of "lower" liturgical traditions. One of the most (small-c) catholic compositions of Howells that has become one of his best-known and most-often performed is the Christmas meditation, A spotless rose. Howells takes as his text an anonymous German hymn, probably from the 16th century, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, an almost pietist meditation on the Christmas incarnation. Its central image of the budding rose vacillates between the Virgin Mary and Jesus her son in interpretation, allowing for both Catholic and Protestant devotion. Michael Praetorius left Christian worship the earliest surviving version in 1609, and later Protestants used the translation "Lo how a rose e'er blooming." Howells based his motet on the more robust translation from the German by Catherine Winkworth.Howells' basic musical conception is tonally grounded, but flowers in modally parallel structures. The first verse follows a basically florid melody -- melismatic and shifting in rhythmic meter as plainchant might -- in the upper voices, with utterly chordal and homophonic choral textures. Some diverse moments seem to reflect local aspects of the text: the "growing" of the plant and the long melisma, the sudden harmonic shift on the "fairest bud" unfolding followed by the "cold winter," whose choral harmonies refuse to cadence. The composer first sets the second verse for baritone soloist and gentle choral chords beneath; the soloist takes the melody, but the choir undergirds him with subtly different harmonies, including a surprising minor shift under "God's great love and might," and a silence as the soloist sings the "cold winter's night." The full choir repeats the second verse, opening with the same harmonic structure from the first, though taking "Mary, purest Maid" as a kind of pivot into a richer harmonic reading of God's love and might, and a more profound harmonic space, with more shivering gaps, to set the final depiction of the cold, cold winter's night. ~ Timothy Dickey, Rovi
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| A Spotless Rose | |
| A Spotless Rose, for chorus (from "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal") |
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