Hymnus Paradisi

Hymnus Paradisi is a choral work by Herbert Howells for soprano and tenor soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra. The work was inspired in part by the death of his son Michael in 1935. Howells wrote the work from 1936 to 1938, but then retained the music privately, without public performance. Howells maintained later in life that Ralph Vaughan Williams convinced him to allow the work to be performed publicly at the Three Choirs Festival. However, his former pupil and biographer Paul Spicer contends that Howells first showed the music to Herbert Sumsion, organist of Gloucester Cathedral, who in turn showed it to Gerald Finzi, and that only after these two expressed their enthusiasm did Howells show the music to Vaughan Williams. The title 'Hymnus Paradisi' was suggested by Sumsion. The work received its successful premiere at the Festival in 1950. The score was published in 1951.

Howells had begun composition with his setting of the poem "Hymnus circa exsequies defuncti" of Prudentius. The piece consists of six movements:

1. Preludio (for orchestra)
2. Requiem aeternam (the first 30 bars are identical to the 3rd movement of the Requiem of 1936)
3. The Lord is my shepherd (a setting of Psalm 23)
4. Sanctus. I will lift up mine eyes (which juxtaposes the Sanctus from the Ordinary of the Mass with Psalm 121)
5. I heard a voice from heaven (from the Burial Service)
6. Holy is the true light (from the Salisbury Diurnal, translation by G.H. Palmer)

Hugh Ottaway and Christopher Palmer have commented on the stylistic affinity of Hymnus Paradisi with the music of Frederick Delius.