Michael Howard

Michael Stockwin Howard, organist, composer and conductor: born London 14 September 1922; six times married (five children); died Groombridge, East Sussex 4 January 2002.

Organist, conductor, composer, scholar, lecturer – Michael Howard had a considerable influence on British musical life. He was one of the defining choral conductors of his generation: he helped lay the solid foundations of performance practice that we now accept as commonplace; and, as a scholar, he played a significant role in the revival of Renaissance music in post-war Britain.

He was born in London in 1922. His mother was a talented artist while his father, Frank Henry Howard, a foundation principal in Sir Thomas Beecham's Philharmonic, played the viola in the International String Quartet and was immortalised in Lions and Shadows (1938) by Christopher Isherwood. Educated at Ellesmere College, Michael Howard won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied the organ with G.D. Cunningham and composition with William Alwyn. Further advanced organ study followed with Ralph Downes at the Brompton Oratory, London, and Marcel Dupré at St Sulpice in Paris.

In 1943 Howard became Organist of Tewkesbury Abbey, as well as teaching at Ludgrove School. As the Second World War ended, he returned to London and, for five years from 1945, became Organist of Christ Church, Woburn Square. Twelve months earlier, he had founded the Renaissance Society and Renaissance Singers, a small mixed-voice amateur choir that achieved particular distinction in the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music. He was unhappy with many of the performance details of early music then accepted, particularly with regard to pitch, and his years with the Renaissance Singers allowed him not only to formulate his own performance criteria but to put them easily into practice.

In 1953, his appointment as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Ely Cathedral gave him the opportunity to harness his scholarship to the somewhat exacting demands of the Church's liturgy. Building on the work of his distinguished predecessor Sidney Campbell, Howard expanded the repertoire, particularly, though not exclusively, with Renaissance polyphony, and gave the choir a strong distinctive sound.

Within five exciting years, he had achieved a great deal but began to feel inhibited both by cathedral life and the seeming remoteness of the Fens. Confident that his mantle could pass effortlessly to his assistant, Arthur Wills, Howard duly resigned.

While initially returning to the role of a freelance musician, from 1959 until 1961 he became Director of Music at St George's School, Harpenden. In 1964 he resigned from the Renaissance Singers and founded the Cantores in Ecclesia as a 16-voice professional ensemble. During their 22-year existence, Cantores in Ecclesia regularly appeared at all the major European music festivals, including the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, their recordings consistently winning prizes, including the 1975 Gustave Charpentier Grand Prix du Disque.

Amid all this activity, for 10 years from 1968, Howard worked for the BBC and, in 1972, returned to the organ loft as Organist of St Marylebone Parish Church. In 1976 he co-founded, with George Dushkin, Rye Spring Music Festival, later conducting Rye Spring Opera as well as the Dushkin Chamber Ensemble.

Retiring from St Marylebone in 1979 with the title Organist Emeritus, the same year saw him become Organist to the Franciscans of Rye before, in 1984, returning to his roots, as Rector Chori of St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough. Here, as custodian of a magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ, his series of 1989 recordings of Widor, Vierne, Tournemire, Saint-Saëns and Franck, reveal him as an organ virtuoso at the height of his powers.

He proved equally adept as a composer when, during the 1980s, he returned once more to the discipline, and was as prolific as ever. To many important earlier works he added an opera, The Lion's Mouth (1980), his extensive output culminating in a fine triptych of organ music, all heavily indebted to the French style – Carillon de Larmes (1982), Cantique d'un Oiseau Matinal (1982) and Evocation: Salve Regina.

Erudite and persuasive, Howard was a fine writer. He produced his first volume of autobiography, The Private Inferno, in 1974, completing his observations 25 years later with Thine Adversaries Roar. In between came many learned and scholarly articles together with a monograph on the work of the organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (Tribute to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, 1985). Like many musicians, especially cathedral organists, Howard revelled in the pleasures of things mechanical, particularly steam railways and, not least, luxury cars.

K. Shenton