Slightly sooner than anticipated, I know, due to the urgency of curtailing my sojourn by the sea. Frinton in the rain was only slightly less attractive than Frinton in the sun, and being allergic to my sister's cushions I decamped to a pal’s in Gloucester. And how glad I am that I did. For a start, Derek knows his music; he sings in the cathedral choir and lives in a rather spacious grace-and-favour apartment in the abbey precincts. So when he suggested that we attend Sunday morning Eucharist to sample the visiting choir’s offering, I was happy to concur. Widor's mass for double choir was very ably performed by the ***** Singers, and their afternoon rendition of Stanford in C was equally splendid. One so wants to applaud! But, of course, one doesn't (unlike those blasted prommers who seemed to need to exercise their arms at the end of each movement of the Elgar violin concerto the other week. And if not their arms, their bloody throats. Dear Lord above, if I were director of the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts I would insist that every member of the congregation had a thorough medical examination before admission to the auditorium. And if there was even the merest tickle of a cough, I'd have them shot!) Where was I? Ah yes, Gloucester Cathedral. Gloucester Cathedral! What majesty of Early English architecture. What beauty of medieval craftsmanship! And what, pray, of the splendour of the great East Window? Indulge me for a moment, gentle reader:
What about that, then? An entire wall of glass! How wonderful! (Makes our own rather poky east window look a bit sick by comparison, I can tell you.) And that's not all. Oh no. For beyond the aforementioned window, in a tiny chapel-off-a-chapel in the southern-most corner of the eastern protrusion lies this little gem -
Yes, dear reader, yes - a chapel devoted entirely to the great musicians who have at one time graced the organ loft at Gloucester. No matter that the music in the window on the right is by that stinker, Herbert Howells. (Incidentally, it is a little-known fact that all candidates for the post of organist at Gloucester during the twentieth century had to be called Herbert.) No. The biggest window of them all, the most resplendent in Victorian artistry, the most glorious in its panoply of light and colour, is a memorial to the late, great...
God, in the form of a church musician (should He have required another incarnation)!
On my return home I immediately appraised the so-called Director of Music here of my proposal for a similar memorial window to be erected in our own cathedral. I could tell he was rather taken with the idea, at least until I reminded him that he would have to die in order to be similarly recognised. No matter. Only one thing about my trip to Gloucester left me slightly ill at ease. It was this:
Yes - a homosexual. And a king! And if Gloucester Cathedral could be so magnanimous towards Edmund II, why on earth couldn't the wallah's at Lambeth do the same for Bishop Gene Pitney?
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