Anglican reactions to pop church music

I'm very pleased to note that the full text of the article by Ian and me on this subject, from Studies in Church History 42 (2006), is now available as part of SAS-Space. It follows the reactions of the Anglican church-musical "establishment" to the experimentation with church pop from the late fifties until the early nineties, with a particular focus on reactions to Geoffrey Beaumont's Folk Mass.

See also an earlier post on Beaumont.

The Children's Book

I am about half-way through A.S. Byatt's latest, the Booker-shortlisted The Children's Book. It touches on the nature of art in several ways; perhaps most interesting for this blog is the portrayal of the potter Benedict Fludd, who (it has been suggested) bears some resemblance to Eric Gill.

It has attracted a good few reviews, helpfully listed at www.complete-review.com. The review by James Wood in the LRB I found most interesting.

Letters of T.S. Eliot

I note the recent appearance of the second volume in the correspondence of T.S. Eliot, covering the period 1923-25. Although Eliot was writing little new poetry in this period, there appears to be much there on more general questions of learned publishing, the circulation of ideas and Eliot's view of what The Criterion was to do. Several reviews have appeared, the most extended of which is by Stefan Collini in the Guardian. Collini has of course written on Eliot in his Absent Minds. Michael Wood in the LRB draws out some traces of Eliot's emerging religious thinking on the importance of suffering and sacrifice.

Ruth Duckworth

I note a recent obituary of the sculptor Ruth Duckworth, in the Guardian. There is some useful biographical and catalogue information here.

Of most interest for this blog are her Stations of the Cross, for St. Joseph's Church, New Malden (R.C.). There is a very full set of photos at the church's own site.

C.S. Lewis and the planets

There is an interesting and very favourable review by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, in a recent TLS of Planet Narnia, a new book on C.S.Lewis, and in particular the symbolism of the planets embedded in the Narnia series. It argues that themes that are explicit in The Discarded Image and That Hideous Strength can be used as a method of understanding the seven books of the Narnia series.
The author, Michael Ward, has put together a website dedicated to the book. It is available online (to subscribers) at Oxford Scholarship Online.

Peter Boorman

I spot a recent obituary of Peter Boorman, organist of St Davids. It is of chief interest here for the fact that Boorman was perhaps the first organist to introduce girls' voices into a cathedral choir, in an emergency in 1963, and on a permanent basis from 1966. He seems also to have had some involvement in developments that were eventually to issue in Songs of Praise.

The Pope and the artist

I note with interest the recent appeal of the Pope for a new relationship with artists, beginning with an event at the Vatican in November, although it isn't clear what the agenda for that meeting is. (See the National Catholic Reporter of Sept 11th.) This seems to pick up some of the themes of John Paul II's Letter to Artists of 1999.

Myfanwy Piper

I note a recent piece by Frances Spalding on Myfanwy Piper in the Guardian, in advance of her forthcoming OUP book on the two Pipers. More information on Spalding may be found on her pages at Newcastle University, including further references on Piper and Coventry Cathedral.

Antonio Pacitti

I note obituaries of the sculptor Antonio Pacitti in the Times and the Church Times. He is of note here for a number of religious works, including a Madonna and Child for the new church of St Thomas More in Patcham, East Sussex, in 1964. Helpful lists of his works and exhibitions are available at churchart.co.uk

Leonie Cohn

I note another obituary, this time of the radio producer Leonie Cohn, who worked on numerous programmes on the arts for the Third Programme in the Fifties and Sixties.

Noel Vincent

I note a recent obituary of Canon Noel Vincent: he was of most interest for the purposes of this blog in his work as producer of Songs of Praise, from the mid 1970s until his retirement.

Rowan Williams on George Bell

Rather belatedly, I find the text of the Archbishop's lecture on Bell, given last year at Chichester as part of the anniversary events. It strikes me as a most useful and important piece, relating Bell's concern with the arts with his stance on ecumenism and international relations. It also makes specific mention of the Canterbury plays, in one of which I am myself particularly interested (see earlier post on John Masefield.)

Muriel Spark

I note several reviews of Martin Stannard's new Life of Spark, including Jonathan Bate in the Telegraph and John Carey in the Sunday Times. Most of the reviewers give space to the importance of her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1954.
Stannard himself is based at the University of Leicester and has also published extensively on that other 'Catholic novelist', Evelyn Waugh.

God and Mystery in Words - Review

David Brown
God & Mystery in Words. Experience through Metaphor and Drama
Oxford, OUP, 2008: 978-0-19-923183-6

[A review first published in Anvil 26;2 (2009). It is republished here by kind permission of the Reviews Editor.]

Natural and revealed theology, argues David Brown, are in a state of crisis, and the only way out of that crisis is to pay greater attention to the cultural embeddedness of both. The volume under review is the third in a series which examines religious experience as mediated by culture in general, and by the arts in particular. God and Enchantment of Place (2004) considered the ways in which religious experience has been found in religious architecture, in the urban built environment and in gardens. God and Grace of Body (2007) continued the investigation, and the present volume concludes the series with metaphor and drama. Brown notes the tendency in recent religious history towards a narrowing of the spheres in which religious experience might be found, and advances ample historical evidence that it was not always so.

Both parts of the book employ the same approach: to begin with a broad historical examination of metaphor or drama, and to proceed to an examination of their use in specific contexts of worship. Part One, on metaphor, seeks to recover the potential of language to function sacramentally. Part of the legacy of the confrontation between ‘science’ and biblical criticism in the last two centuries has been to force much theology into a defensive reduction of language to its literal descriptive function. Brown would like to see the church recover the power of verbal image to point beyond itself, and lead us to further reflection. Water, for instance (68-9) can be symbolic of cleansing, but also of inundation and destruction, or of refreshment and the quenching of thirst. There is much to be lost in the flattening-out of metaphor, and in the rush to premature closure. Along the way, Brown has stimulating and at times trenchant things to say to hymn writers; to those charged with revising hymn texts; to preachers; and to biblical translators. Brown is however careful to stress that such an acknowledgment of the ‘inexhaustibility’ of metaphor need not necessarily be mere obfuscation; a cloak behind which to avoid doctrinal commitment.

Part Two proceeds in similar manner to examine drama. Brown argues for regarding church music not only as a vehicle for words, but as having an important dramatic and structural function in liturgy in its own right. Liturgical dress and movement, church architecture and internal ordering are all considered, reinforcing Brown’s plea that these all be allowed the space in worship to function sacramentally. The impulse to explain and define ought not to be allowed to force an important minority of potential worshippers to seek a sense of the numinous almost anywhere but in church.

In sum, this volume handsomely repays attentive reading, being elegantly written, lucid and admirably concise. Specialist historians of worship or language are unlikely to be surprised in matters of detail; however, the range of material employed, across genres, periods and countries is dazzling and some highly suggestive historical insights are offered. Brown is scrupulously even-handed in his treatment of different artistic styles, and there is no trace of any particular churchmanship being brought to bear. For this reviewer, it suggested questions about how to understand the work of the Spirit through created things; questions sometimes sidelined through distrust of an over-powerful natural theology and for fear of possible idolatry or creeping immanentism. Although Brown does not address the work of the Spirit directly, he provides a fascinating basis on which to begin doing so.

David Mellor

Slightly belated, I note this obituary of the designer David Mellor. He is interesting in this connection as one with affinities with Arts and Crafts thinking on the right integration of work, art and life. He was also married to Fiona MacCarthy, biographer of William Morris and Eric Gill, amonst others. He was also something of a cult figure amongst a certain type of Sheffielder in my time there.

'Jim' Cadbury-Brown

I note this obituary of the architect H.T. Cadbury-Brown. He is of note here as the architect trusted by Benjamin Britten to work for him at Aldeburgh, also building there a house for Imogen Holst.

John Masefield's 'The Coming of Christ'

I am bound to note the appearance, on the School of Advanced Study's institutional repository SAS-Space, a post-print text of my article on this play by John Masefield. Commissioned by George Bell for performance in Canterbury Cathedral in 1928 (one of Bell's last acts as Dean before his appointment as Bishop of Chichester), it is often (incorrectly) described as the first play to be staged in an English cathedral since the Reformation. The article explores what precedents there were for such a performance; examines the controversy provoked by the play, on theological, moral and aesthetic grounds; and locates it in the development of Bell's own thinking with regard to the relationship between the Church of England and the arts.

The article is to be published in Humanitas. The Journal of the George Bell Institute later this year. I am extremely grateful to the Editor for permission to publish this version at this time. It was originally given at a conference under the auspices of the Institute last year.

Westminster Abbey

Some early reactions to the proposals made by the Dean of Westminster to add a corona to the Abbey, in connection with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2013; see the Times report, and material on the Abbey's own site.

So far the reactions have been predictable: that money shouldn't be spent on frivolities while anyone is still homeless (see comment on the Times article); that it should be left as it is (editorials and columns in the Guardian and the Evening Standard.) I anticipate further wrangles about style when the competition to design it begins.

More on T. S. Eliot

I note the recent launch of a major new project, editing Eliot's prose and poetry, co-ordinated by the Institute of English Studies (University of London).

The Art Instinct

I note two reviews of this new study by Denis Dutton on the evolutionary biology behind our instinctual appreciation of the arts: they are by Roger Kimball in the TLS and Nigel Warburton in Prospect.

Kimball notes Dutton's avoidance of the gleeful '"existential deflation" which might be expected when such stringent naturalistic terms are applied to concepts such as "beauty"; it remains however still "perforce a coming-down-to-earth" for aesthetics. Kimball also detects a thinness in Dutton's treatment of the religion-art relationship, and notes a continued "craving for transcendence" in much contemporary discourse.

T.S. Eliot

I note that Fulcrum are to re-publish a section from the Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot.

It is: Cleo McNelly Kearns, ‘Religion, literature and society in the work of T. S. Eliot’ from A. David Moody (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot (Cambridge: CUP, 2002), pp. 77-93.

Delius's 'A Mass of Life'

The Bach Choir are currently preparing a performance of this piece, and a friend made an intriguing observation, to the effect that the piece has an almost cult status in secularist musical circles as one of the very few choral works without an explicitly religious text. It set me thinking about how this might have played out in the piece's critical reception. It also made me wonder about what influence this might have had in its (very limited) performance history. I should be very grateful for any observations anyone might have on this. I don't really know the literature on Delius at all; his own belief position seems quite well documented, but I don't know about his reputation more widely.

Further details of the performance in the Royal Festival Hall on May 21st at the Bach Choir site. The Mass seems to have attracted relatively few recordings, to judge from the discography on the Delius Society site.

Christian Worship Worldwide - Review

Charles E. Farhadian (ed.),
Christian Worship Worldwide. Expanding Horizons, Deepening Practices
Grand Rapids/Cambridge, Eerdmans, 2007: ISBN 978-0-8028-2853-8

[A review, first published in Anvil 25;4 (2008), 330-1, and reproduced by kind permission of the Reviews Editor]

This collection of essays, part of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies Series, is one of many questions and few answers, but arguably none the worse for it. Its central concern is with the exchange of worship practices between cultures, both historically (from the west to the rest) and in the present, when the flow has gone into reverse. Charles Farhadian’s introduction (1-24) identifies the central issue: how may Christians distinguish between elements of worship that may be transcultural and thus fixed (say, the general shape of the Eucharist), and those that may be contextual, and determined by local custom. In addition, which practices may be transferred in their original form, without adaptation (the cross-cultural) and which are counter-cultural, standing out against the receiving culture, and enabling us to examine our own distinctions between what is fundamental and those things to which we are merely accustomed.
All these are useful questions, and particularly so, as Farhadian shows, as the centre of gravity of world Christianity shifts southwards. Yet this is not simply an exercise in cultural relativism, part of the wider analysis of globalisation; rather it is an attempt to relativise those elements that are culturally particular, in order better to isolate those that are genuinely common. The temptation is great to make one’s own worship practice normative for others, and a barometer of spiritual health.

So much for the questions, here usefully framed. Next is a series of case studies of worship from around the world: in the Mar Thoma church in Kerala, India; among Apostles and Zionists in Zimbabwe; amongst Pentecostals in South America, and several others. These studies are by turns stimulating and startling and several stand as the most comprehensive accounts of their subject available. There are along the way useful materials for the historian of Western mission. What is often missing, despite the best efforts of the editor in the short prefaces to each, is much analysis of the question the collection is intended to address; the reader is often required to make many of the broader connections himself.

Part III concludes the book, with essays by C. Michael Hawn, Bryan D. Spinks and Lamin Sanneh, each circling around the analysis that the introduction suggests. Again, there is much suggestive and useful material here, and very little that can actually be faulted, but often also a sense of bets being hedged. Hawn comes closest to nailing colours to the mast, in a most useful examination of how a western congregation might approach using elements of worship from the worldwide church. He suggests an exploratory set of criteria to apply: does this dance/song/ritual draw attention to itself, or does it fit into the progression of the liturgy ? Does it give a voice to the otherwise voiceless ? Does it unify the body ? Does it provoke prayer for the worldwide church ? The challenge presented by this collection is to order our worship in such a way that our relationship with fellow Christians worldwide can be made more immediate, alongside the (hitherto dominant) visible continuity of worship with that of the saints who preceded us. Christian Worship Worldwide, without providing any blueprints, succeeds splendidly in posing the questions that need answering as we begin.

Roger Scruton on beauty

I note some reviews of Roger Scruton's recent On Beauty (OUP). Jonathan Ree reviews it in Prospect (March 2009), noting the tendency in Scruton's work towards the jeremiad concerning contemporary culture, in which there is an implicit historical narrative of decline.

A review has also appeared in the Observer, and an extract in the Times, dealing with the 'kitschification' of religious art in particular. See also Scruton on the 'flight from beauty' in Axess

See also an earlier post on his Culture Counts

Church music and evangelical identity

I'm bound to note the appearance of Ian and my article on this subject, published as part of British Evangelical Identities (Paternoster, 2009, edited by Mark Smith). It explores the way in which, over the period between c.1958 and 1991, the use of 'new' or 'pop' church music functioned as part of evangelical identity in the Church of England, focussing on perceptions amongst those outside the constituency.

It is also usefully read alongside our other articles on the topic of 'pop' church music in the twentieth century Church of England - see earlier posts here and here.

Andrew Motion on the Bible

Two recent things of note from Andrew Motion:

The first was a piece in the Guardian Education supplement, on the centrality of the Bible to understanding English literature. His comments, from a professed atheist, will set heads nodding among those who have tried to teach religious history, even in a university context.
It provoked a number of responses, including that of Andrew Brown, also in the Guardian.

The second thing was another Guardian piece, this time reflecting on the role of Poet Laureate, which Motion is about to relinquish after ten years.

Witness: Five Plays from the Gospel of Luke

I note the current re-run of a series of plays by Nick Warburton on the life of Christ as given in Luke's gospel: see the Radio 4 site. I believe there are three left, with one available on the iPlayer service.

Youth Culture in Modern Britain

I note Ian's new review of David Fowler's new study, published today in Reviews in History. Issues relating to the relationships between generations and the growing cultural prominence of youth are never far away when considering 'pop' church music, and this study provides valuable background.

See also another review, in the Times Higher. Fowler himself appeared on Radio 4's Thinking Allowed programme in February.

St Peter's College, Cardross

A fascinating piece on 'the spaceship', the remarkable seminary, designed after Le Corbusier in the 1960s by architects Isi Metzstein and Andrew MacMillan. Brian Dillon visits the now derelict structure for the Guardian, 14th February. See also an older article from Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian, which discusses in passing the building's sudden obsolescence in post-Council Catholic Scotland.

The film director Murray Grigor filmed the interior in 1972 and has revisited it to remake his original film; it is to be screened later this year.

More on the credit crunch

By way of a footnote to an earlier post, Robert McCrum on the possible effects on publishing and writing, and David Smith on Waiting for Godot as a play de nos jours, both in the Observer.

Spender's Jewish roots

I note an interesting recent piece in the TLS (25th February) on the Jewish background to the work of Stephen Spender.

The Triumph of Music

Tim Blanning's new book has attracted a good deal of review attention. Amongst the most interesting:
(i) a joint interview with Blanning and Ian Bostridge in Standpoint
(ii) Simon Heffer in the Telegraph - very critical of the book, particularly its apparent neglect of 20th century English music, and its 'navel-gazing expatiations' on John Coltrane or Eric Clapton.
(iii) James Penrose in The New Criterion
(iv) further reviews in the Guardian and Independent

G. K. Chesterton

I note a review by A. N. Wilson of a new study of Chesterton by William Oddie, in the TLS, 28th Jan. It is also reviewed by Christopher Howse in the Tablet.

A scary crucifix

The Church Times reports a West Sussex church removing a crucifix figure from above the church door, partly because the figure has been scaring children, and partly because of a perceived inappropriateness of a crucifix as opposed to an empty cross. I feel sure that there is more to the issue than this, not least questions of style; the figure is by Edward Bainbridge Copnall, and dates from 1963.

Pinter in Poets' Corner ?

I note a recent exchange, related to the suggestion (impossible by custom, as it turns out) that Harold Pinter be commemorated in Poet's Corner. The suggestion is made by the Conservative MP Ed Vaizey on his blog, and subsequently objected to, by at least one newspaper letter-writer, on grounds of Pinter's expressed views on Christianity. (Times 8/1/09)

Art, culture and the credit crunch

I note a recent spate of articles dwelling on what effects the credit crunch might have on the arts, particularly in connection with the recent BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit. They are all interesting in their various ways for the views they take of the relation between art/culture and the economic 'base', as it were, as well as for their various takes on the virtuousness of thrift more generally. See:
(i) a Guardian review article by Colin Burrow, on the idea of indebtedness in literature from Milton to Martin Amis
(ii) George Walden in the TLS - After the credit crunch - the arts crunch ?.
(iii) A.S. Byatt on Little Dorrit, also in the Guardian.

Reassessing T.S. Eliot

I note an interesting piece on Eliot by Jeanette Winterson in the Guardian, connected with the current series of Eliot's plays at the Donmar Warehouse. See also a review of the series in the TLS, 10/12/2008, with some discussion of Murder in the Cathedral.