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Herbert Howells was acutely sensitive to the transience of life, having witnessed the loss of friends and contemporaries in the First World War and encountered deep personal tragedy when his son Michael died of polio at the age of only nine. As a result, a mood of elegiac yearning inhabits much of his choral music. This flavor is exemplified by the austere Requiem and the elegant Take him, earth, for cherishing, commissioned to commemorate the death of President John F. Kennedy. And yet Howells could write magnificently thrilling music too, as demonstrated by the fresh brilliance of A Hymn for St. Cecilia and the spine-tingling grandeur of the St. Paul's Service. All of these works are lovingly performed here by the young voices of Trinity College Choir, Cambridge led by Stephen Layton.