To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=159977
7 messages

Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song

24 May 16 - 11:54 AM (#3791897)
Subject: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Stower

The mystery play that carried Coventry Carol was traditionally performed at Corpus Christi, falling this year on 26th May. The song and play have only been preserved through acts of good timing and good luck, surviving the general loss of many period artefacts, royal suppression of its staging, and a devastating fire that destroyed the original document. Click here for an article tracing the troubled history of the song and the play cycle that carried it, with a video performing the song and telling of its first powerful hearing by the performer.


24 May 16 - 08:34 PM (#3792004)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: leeneia

I read your article, Stower. But I wish you would use darker print. I agree that the Coventry Carol is a very moving song.


25 May 16 - 11:11 AM (#3792097)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Pete from seven stars link

Interesting stuff, and I had not heard it before. Unable to get the linked vid but looked up on you tube , one choir version and Annie Lennox with African children's choir which I quite liked.    At the risk of being moved below the line.....I noticed the article doubts the incident actually happened despite the historical evidence that this is perfectly in character for herod . Just to note, that there are a number of biblical things once doubted by secularists but which historical discoveries have now validated.


25 May 16 - 12:31 PM (#3792115)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Jack Campin

...the Massacre of the Innocents not being one of them.


25 May 16 - 01:15 PM (#3792121)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Stower

Thank you all for contributing.

leeneia, you've raised darker characters before on Early Music Muse. There isn't anything I can do about that but you can - just turn your screen resolution down.

Pete from seven stars link, I've never thought of myself as a secularist or an anythingist, really! I'm just interested in the evidence, as Jack Campin says. There is no evidence for the slaughter of the innocents, no one but Matthew mentions it, not even the other Gospels, and it seems highly strange that such a major and catastrophic event, if real, would be missing from contemporary accounts - Josephus, for example. In any case, Matthew, who was keen to stress Jesus' Jewishness, seems to have borrowed the story from Moses' childhood.

Anyway, I don't really want to get caught up in questions of biblical historicity. Such concerns are a footnote in my article about the story of the song and its power. Pete, I checked the video link and don't know why it didn't work for you - but here it is.


25 May 16 - 06:29 PM (#3792169)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Pete from seven stars link

I just got a defunct version of you tube , and I,m too technically challenged to sort it, but as I said, I enjoyed the versions I found.   Fair comment that there is no evidence outside of Matthew ..........as yet.


27 Jul 16 - 02:03 PM (#3802280)
Subject: RE: Origins: Coventry Carol: the power of a song
From: Stower

Pete, I've just tested the link and it works. I wonder if the issue is with your web device rather than the link.