Secular Decline, Sacred Rise (1940–62)

Throughout his later life, Sowerby extended various traits from earlier in his career. Besides maintaining his employment at Saint James and the American Conservatory, he built his music on many well-established features—dense chromaticism, motivic repetition, folk melodies, adoption of historical forms and techniques. One dramatic change, however, is the increasing dichotomy between Sowerby’s visibility in church and concert realms. From the 1940s onward Sowerby was a mainstay of church music conferences, abetting his growing reputation in sacred music. Meanwhile, his continued devotion to post-Romantic idioms and rejection of serialism and other experimental trends facilitated his concert hall decline. All this has perpetuated an imbalance between the reception of Sowerby’s sacred and concert music, which in many ways continues to define the composer.