Football, hymns and funerals

The Guardian report on the funeral of Rhys Jones, the boy murdered in Liverpool last month, spent some time on the use of music. It was interesting in that it showed the re-embedding of pieces of music in new contexts, in three different ways. The playing of the Z-Cars theme (a terrace anthem at Everton, of whom he was a fan) on the organ, is in one sense relatively conventional - the use of a favourite piece of secular music at a funeral, and one which many of those present would previously have sung at Goodison Park. Also quite usual was the choice of hymns which he probably sang at school. Most interesting, I thought, was 'Abide with me' - a hymn of the nineteenth century, translated many years ago into use at the Cup Final, and now transferred back into church again.

Evangelicals and the arts

Following from my earlier post about a recent lecture on music at the St Paul's Theological Centre, an interesting story picked up by the online Guardian about recent ventures in evangelical engagement with the visual arts in the US, under the headline 'Evangelicals start push in the arts'. It is interesting both in itself, and for the fact that the Guardian picked the story up.

The abstract and the figurative in stained glass

Not very British, but I note a dispute over a new window in Cologne cathedral, being of an abstract, non-representational style, by Gerhard Richter. The Times reports opposition from the cardinal of Cologne, as well as some suggestion of the design being 'too Islamic' (because it eschews representation), which strikes me as something of a red herring in this context.