Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music

Subject: Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music
From: Rain Dog
Date: 31 Dec 19 - 06:15 AM

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day

Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music

Performed as part of the mystery plays, the 'Coventry Carol' is from the Pageant of the Shearman and Taylors and tells the story of the Slaughter of The Innocents. A copy of the manuscript survived a fire in Birmingham Library in 1879 by sheer chance. Musician Ian Pittaway describes seeing the play in the ruins of Coventry cathedral in the 1980s - the drama was so powerful it still moves him to tears. The carol was sung on Christmas Day in 1940 in a live broadcast to the Empire just six weeks after the bombing of Coventry that destroyed the city's cathedral. Journalist Donna Marmestein tells of how the carol transformed how she felt about loss in her family; composer and performer Tori Amos describes what inspired her cover version of the song and Amy Hanson from the Small Steps Charity talks about how much her mother loved the carol. The children from the school her charity supports in Kenya sing their version of the song. Roxanne Burroughs explains about how her daughter Kaitlyn came to have the carol sung at her funeral. The soloist is Samantha Lewis; early music is from The Night Watch; Reading Phoenix choir and Southern Voices sing the carol and the children's choir is from the Rehabilitation centre Immanuel Afrika in Nairobi, Kenya. Producer: Sara Conkey

Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music

Subject: RE: Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music
From: Joe G
Date: 03 Jan 20 - 05:03 AM

Always an enjoyable and often moving programme

Subject: RE: Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 03 Jan 20 - 08:06 AM

The Late Middle Ages were turbulent times. Perhaps the audience of the Mystery Play recognised the terror of the Slaughter of the Innocents as well as the comfort of the Coventry Carol.

Subject: RE: Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Jan 20 - 08:13 PM

It's a beautiful tune with beautiful words, but it troubles me a bit that it should ever have been embraced as a Christmas carol (whilst I'm an avid atheist, I do enjoy lustily belting out a few carols, lest anyone should think I'm coming the ould curmudgeon here). For one thing, the slaughter of the innocents almost certainly never happened. It's a rather odd thing about Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular (though I acknowledge that this particular song isn't specifically Catholic) that it revels in horror at times. Witness for one the obscenity of a bleeding-to-death near-naked Jesus on a tree with nails in his hands and feet (we even force children to sit under such vile depictions in classrooms). And I've lost count of the number of times I've seen stacks of martyrs' bones in urns in crypts, or vials of saints' blood that miraculously liquefy once a year, or skulls and crossbones sculpted somewhere or other in Italian churches...

But the song is a heart-rending depiction of the mother's loss of her child. I'm not quite sure where it fits in the modern age but I do have mixed feelings about it as a Christmas carol. Speaking of the loss of a child, and a bit off-topic, I'm reminded of a poem by Teresa Hooley called War Film. It should give pause to war lords, but probably never does:

When the day was done,
My little son
Wondered at bath-time why I kissed him so,
Naked upon my knee
How could he know
The sudden terror that assaulted me?…
The body I had borne
Nine moons beneath my heart,
A part of me…..
If, someday
It should be taken away
To War. Tortured, Torn.
Slain.
Rotting in No Man’s Land, out in the rain –
My little son...

...yet all those men had mothers, every one

Subject: RE: Coventry Carol - BBC Soul Music
From: GUEST,Malcolm Storey
Date: 08 Jan 20 - 07:14 AM

It's certainly more fitting than "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" which always features on Australian Christmas Carol lists.
And if you watched the new year in via the Sydney fireworks on TV you would have heard the worst rendition of Auld Lang Sine EVER!