James D. Herbert

Lecture Outline for HCC: Coventry

November 2011

I. Cathedral Reborn

A. Historical background of Coventry Cathedral

1. 14^th-century Church of Saint Michael, elevated to Cathedral status (own diocese) in 1918 to serve this growing industrial city.

2. November 1940: Coventry was target of first bombing raid of civilian targets of World War II. Cathedral’s wooden roof burns and collapses; masonry walls and tower remain standing.

3. 1950s: campaign to rebuild Cathedral: but should it be recreated, or replaced?

B. Solution: Design by Basil Spence, completed 1962

1. Old shell preserved; serve as foil (contrast) to new. Burnt cross in open-air, old apse.

2. New structure built perpendicular to old, with altar in the north (usually altar is in the east). Porch and glass wall at transition.

3. Modernist style.

4. Huge tapestry of Christ in Majesty, by Graham Sutherland, beyond altar.

C. Message of walk from old to new: old is destroyed and fragmented; new is redeemed and complete. “A path from ruins to renewal, from wartime sacrifice to postwar resurrection, from the crucifixion of the Lord to his redemption—and purportedly toward our salvation.”

II. Requiem aeternam

A. Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem: basic facts.

1. Commissioned for consecration of Coventry Cathedral: 30 May 1962 (our recording, under BB’s direction, dates from 1963)

2. Personnel/Instrumentation

a. Full symphony orchestra; full choir; soprano solo.

b. Boys choir; harmonium.

c. Chamber orchestra (12 players); tenor and baritone solos.

3. Combination of texts: Latin Mass for the Dead and poems about World War I by Wilfred Owen.

B. Antitheses within Requiem aeternam:

1. Tritone: the devil’s interval conveys conflict, lack of resolution.

2. Main choir: not “rest” but rather suspended irresolution.

3. Boys choir: seems heavenly in contrast; timeless stability.

4. Tenor solo: Owen poetry about lack of salvation for modern war victims.

C. Contrast between Cathedral and Requiem:

1. Cathedral: out of broken past emerges restored present.

2. War Requiem: out of sacred, hopeful past emerges a mundane, hopeless present.

III. The Church of Saint Michael

A. Cathedral dedicated to reconciliation.

1. Want to overcome split between nations: especially Britain and Germany.

2. Also: between classes, between denominations.

B. Building attempt to realize this goal:

1. Guild Chapel; Chapel of Unity.

2. Eclecticism of materials (extension of ideals of Ruskin, Morris).

C. Function of floor plan:

1. Emphasis on high altar; light radiating across the globe.

2. Orientation of Chapel of Unity finesses the doctrinal problem that participating Protestant denominations did not share belief in importance of Eucharist: focus on Baptism instead.

3. More important: juxtaposition of “vertical” new Cathedral (N/S) and ruined old Cathedral (E/W).

D. Paradox: can’t voice call for reconciliation without representing evil committed in the past.

1. Visible ruins memorialize German destruction.

2. Figure of Saint Michael: a militant church defeating evil.

3. Epstein sculpture.

E. Double moral danger:

1. Self-righteousness: claim God (or the deity of whatever stripe) is on your side.

a. Could happen with the main altar, with Christ enthroned behind the priest.

b. Could happen with Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “all children of God”, but through “Jesus Christ.”

c. Could happen with Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter: the infinite associated with earthly Christian church.

2. To the Victor goes the moral spoils.

a. c.f. Utilitarianism (introduced by Bonnie Kent, in relation to Epicurianism): what is just is not eternal, but rather that which best served the needs of a particular group at a given time.

b. Is, then, the destruction of German churches in WWII (e.g. Berlin, Lübeck) morally equivalent to the destruction of Coventry? What if Germany had won the war?

3. Possible approach to a solution: posit a moral absolute, but held in custody of a deity about whom we can know nothing (not even whether it exists).

IV. Agnus Dei

A. Self-righteousness does appear in War Requiem (e.g. in Dies irae).

B. General tendency of War Requiem: neither side is given upper hand.

1. Music inverts architecture: instead of fragmented past and whole present, a whole past and fragmented present.

2. Best examples in music:

a. Back & forth in Dies irae (potentially to be discussed in section)

b. Agnus Dei (remainder of this section in lecture)

C. Basic musical turn: ten-note passage:

1. Shared by large and small ensembles; seamless passage between the two.

2. Descend in minor; ascend in major. Both a sense of totality within a single musical motif, and of endless striving built from the tritone.

3. Extension through remainder of scale.

4. Excluded note becomes symbol of goal of striving: D sharp.

D. Libretto lacks any sign of reconciliation.

1. Choir’s sentiment in Latin: “Grant them rest.”

2. Owen poetry: only soldiers know truth of Christ’s sacrifice; the rest (home front) is just bad faith.

E. How reconcile music and text? Two possibilities:

1. Soldiers take on task of singing battle’s refrain.

2. impossibility of finding resolution to these contradictions.

3. Both interpretations confirmed by final musical phrase of movement. War Requiem refuses any easy resolution to this contradiction.

V. Father Forgive

A. Pivotal point in procession through Coventry Cathedral: before the wooden cross at the apse of the old Cathedral.

B. Engraved on wall: “Father Forgive.” Forgive what?

1. Forgive “their” specific act: bombing of Cathedral. Forgive the Germans.

a. Call for forgiveness here compromises itself by recalling the crime.

b. Sanctimoniousness tempts: as if Christ will back up British complaint.

2. Forgive “our” sins (in general). Forgive all of us.

a. Abstract the specific transgression.

b. Possibly abstract subject (“Father”) of forgiveness as well.

c. Risks a general leveling of transgressions. Back to problem of equivalence of German and Allied bombings.

d. c.f. the German and British soldiers in Owen’s “Strange Meeting” (in Libera me).

3. Approach to possible solution: posit a superhuman agent that serves as custodian of capacity to full recognize transgression and fully forgive it.

C. Larger conclusion, perhaps for the entire quarter: need to maintain a human humility in our claims about the divine.

VI. Libera me

A. Final movement begins with trembling fear in front of martial Judgment.

B. Thin orchestration for “Strange Meeting.”

C. Redemption into harmonic unity with Choir, Boys Choir.

D. Return of the tritone: still a lack of resolution.

E. Final “Amen”: complete artifice in proposed resolution: impossibility ever to resolve. Both harmony and its necessary absence.

F. “Ultimately, the War Requiem proposed neither belief nor disbelief; it demands neither full faith nor sure skepticism. Instead, if proffers a place where belief or its lack is not the relevant question, where the hubris of either such certainty cedes to the prospect that we bear full responsibility to condemn evil and to forgive it, even as we know that our limited powers can do neither in the manner in which they need be done.”