Herbert Howells (1892–1983): Phantasy String Quartet, Op. 25 

In 1905, W.W. Cobbett launched a competition to breathe new life into British chamber music by reviving the ‘Phantasy’, an archaic form which Henry Purcell had made his own in about 1680. The competition’s criteria stated that ‘The parts must be of equal importance, and the duration of the piece should not exceed twelve minutes. Though the Phantasy is to be performed without a break, it may consist of different sections varying in tempi and rhythm.’ Composers including Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Arnold Bax and Frank Bridge all rose to the challenge, composing works under Cobbett’s auspices. In the 1917 competition, second prize (of 10 guineas) was awarded to Herbert Howells for his Phantasy String Quartet Op. 25 (the first prize that year went to Harry Waldo Warner). In Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, he wrote that in Howells’s Quartet ‘the fine tunes on which it is built are not traditional, but are by Howells himself … modal colouring persists throughout, and the themes are subjected to a process of permutation, rather than development, which is analogous to the process which tunes undergo when transmitted orally.’ Cobbett went on to say that Howells ‘contrives in the single movement of a phantasy to let his themes pass through a series of moods which are equivalent, in miniature, to the fully expressed phrases of a four-movement work’. The result is a quartet that has moments of striking beauty, with occasional echoes of the Tallis Fantasia by his friend Vaughan Williams. 

© Nigel Simone 2025