It's not easy, I know, explaining to people what's so good about the cathedrals, all of them, really, except that one in Liverpool, but especially the gothic, mediaeval ones.
They have always talked to me, I don't know why, I'm not Godly, it's the spaces, the grandeur and the craftsmen, who probably were, Godly; they have always set my head spinning at the thought of our determination, our clever monkeyness - I won't even live to see it, but I am gonna build you, God, a church that'll blow your fucking socks off - but I have never been able to share that with others who weren't already of that mind. I think that for many, God gets in the way.
This programme, however, first broadcast in 2008, is jaw-droppingly good, mesmerising and like its subjects, itself a grand ambition. Presenter, Jon Cannon, like all TeeVee presenters, gets in the way a bit but unlike most of them he knows of what he speaks, is an architectural historian, gifted, also, with a presentational style both precise and passionate, like a mediaeval ascetic.
Unlike the unspeakable Kevin Wotsit off Grand Designs, Cannon skillfully describes an architecture speaking to Eternity, not Consumerism, buildings built to unite the masses in humility, not showily fragment them, individualised by money and narcissism, the cathedrals were places which, with their massive stones, astonishing ribbed and fanned vaulted ceilings, lit by ever larger and more complex paimted glass windows, in themselves, were Theatre, buildings whose purpose was nothing short of the recreation of Heaven, on Earth.
Up all night, leaning on the windowsill I desperately didn't want this show to end, it was a transport of delight, beautiful and intelligent, scholarly but inclusive, a well-mannered programme. Here, in the Far North, we are hundreds of miles from Canterbury or Ely or Bath and Wells or Gloucester, even Durham and Yorkminster are a long way but even so Mr Cannon's cathedralising made me want to throw the blogdog Buster and a bag into the SmartCar and fuck off South. Maybe down the Severn, Worcester, Tewkesbury and Gloucester Cathedrals, a stone's throw apart. Here, in the best part of England, there are only Inverness's cash-strapped and thus truncated, Victorian, Episcopalean monstrosity and Orkney's bluff and brutish, sandstone St Magnus Cathedral. Here, often for many, many miles there is no sign on the landscape of the hand of Man; the vast Highlands emptiness is a deliverance of a sort, one yearns, nevertheless, for the stony fastness of God's vaulted, Gothic temples, their soaring, glazed, timbered, burnished, sculpted, embellished, anonymised, collective epitaph to those, now coffin dust, who raised them.
The full programme is among that tangle of numbers, below, at YouTube but would probably be better on the iThing; if you haven't seen it and have an hour free it will prove an hour transcendent, delightfully shorn of Ruin's chatter.
Better still, Englanders, go and visit the damn things, lest they fall before the depredations of the Coalition, sold-off to Rich Arabia or GangsterMother Russia, in a Vince-orgy of wanton, foxtrotting deficit fetishism.
Better still, Englanders, go and visit the damn things, lest they fall before the depredations of the Coalition, sold-off to Rich Arabia or GangsterMother Russia, in a Vince-orgy of wanton, foxtrotting deficit fetishism.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCUQtwIwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fiplayer%2Fepisode%2Fb00b09rb%2FHow_to_Build_a_Cathedral%2F&rct=j&q=HOW%20TO%20BUILD%20A%20CATHEDRAL%20BBC4&ei=RPxZTKW_KY_60wTJ3sDWCA&usg=AFQjCNEMQXzMGna43MkEB16c-vl7pkZcxg&sig2=cDrw_92xKBsNw9YDT6TaWQ&cad=rja
20 comments:
BBC4 - long the saviour of my sanity
But not, evidently, the rout of your insomnia. Good morning, Mr YAIC.
Inspiring (no pun intended). I always had a soft spot for Ely cathedral - but then I had a girlfriend nearby.
A real jaw dropper is Seville cathedral; even better, take the AVE to Cordoba and see the cathedral/mosque. One of the wonders of the world.
With today's sophistication, and award winning black turtle-necked architects, such structures are no longer possible.
Salisbury Cathedral, on a late summer's evening, still lives in my memory after a quarter of a century. It has such a gentle grandeur, a strange experience when it is so vast and apparently imposing.
For me, though, the real gems of such architecture are to be found in small, out-of-the-way churches. Rather than being the huge statement of some important person, executed by the thousands of little people, these churches are a testimony to local eccentricity, not a statement but a conversation. The church at Little Gidding, as memorialised by T.S. Eliot, is very special, almost enough to make me believe in the Christian deity. Almost.
We've discussed Greys Elegy In A Country Churchyard here, before, Mr ptb and I love the ideas and the purposes of them, too, the Norman country churches; the rude, slate Welsh chapels inspire, the ornate vulgarity of the Maryian in the RC chapels is in my view forever damned by the practices of centuries of noncing monsignors and much as I love its hymns I really draw the line at Methodism's joyless, Godless, heathen bastard brickbuilt shithouses.
The English Gothic cathedrals, though, massive, trans-generational job creation schemes, inspiring, like Mr mike's Moorish-Christian structures of Andalucia, to believer and non-believer alike, are the places in which to celebrate our brief flickering, and to mourn it.
And how many times have they burnt down? The fire that hit York Minster in the early 80's was bad enough but only the roof went down really. if memory serves, that was the 7th or 8th time and some of the early ones just destroyed it - gone, finished, chuck a spud on the charcoal. Some nutter in vaguely recent times (well, 1800's) torched it on purpose and was spared the noose because it was widely believed that the act itself necessitated nutter status, which, to be fair, sounds remarkably bleedin' obvious.
Don't like Lincoln though, can't explain it. Sat, on top of the only hill in the county, visible for miles 'n' miles, next to a castle, in lovely grounds, yet, yet, dunno, feels a bit impersonal, distant, separate. Whereas York feels like a friend, like a buddy; no ceremony required as ceremony concluded; job, as it were, done with bells on - hee hee.
Prayer is better than sleep, Mr Ishmael. A mate of mine is a teacher and is almost always to be found in a cathedral town. Now Lincoln, Mr DtP, and, true, it is a bit muscular, austere maybe - but quite magnificent all the same. Highest building in the world for how many hundreds of yesra, was it? We even went heathens on the lash to Poznan one weekend he and I and we still took in the cathedral.
The dark Saxon crypt at Winchester is a brooding ancient spot. If you don't understand it there, you never will. And if you go to Salisbury - the two "do-able" in one half-day - look ye, sinner, up at the vaulting. Truly a wonder of the mediaeval world. And Exeter too. Cathedral closes. eh? I want me one of those.
Dear Mr PTB. Hmm, austere is probably what I was thinking of but a bit too much. Almost like deceptively intimidating. Beverley Cathedral's nice, soft on the eye, very sandstoney and yet quiet and private. Not too big. Bit odd really as the population's probably only about 12 (including transheepuxals) yet they've got 2 massive church type things, sort of Liverpool but, err...better.
The 2 Liverpool Cathedrals are err..just kinda crap. When you've got Battersea powerstation with a spire or two and some concrete effort that cost about £20, well, not too good. Liverpool Catholic cathedral is right by the student union which must add to the vomit.
Mae culpa - Mr Mongoose. Whoopsy daisy.
Wondering there if I'd said something in my sleep, Mr DtP. It wouldn't be the first time....
On the other hand, I couldn't agree more about the Liverpudlian homages to the deity. Nasty. In like vein, Coventry Cathedral distresses me. I wish they had left the noble and poignant ruins alone and not added that excrescence, a badly fitted prosthesis for a war veteran.
I think it's still there, mr ishmael, that flickering flame of something, ready to rekindle given enough space and silence. It never ceases to amaze me, all the brutalilty and stupidity and perilousness of life then, and yet such beauty and skill growing out of it. The music alone makes me shiver sometimes.
Eh Eh you leave the Liverpool proddy one alone you Southern puffs,until you have heard the organ going full blast and are standing looking up inside the tower then keep your winge to the building which is a bit bare,Chester is another one to see inside and out,if you look at the English Heritage site photo section they have some good pictures of the cathedrals.
There is a mad parish church in Louth, where live 7 people and a million sheep - St Mary's, I think - which is as fine as any cathedral. Completely mad but to the greater glory of God. If there is a God way out there in the sticks.
I noticed the run of programs in question and immediately set How to Build a Cathedral for recording, having developed a soft spot for Sailsbury Cathedral from a previous documentary.
The program and the buildings were everything you said of them, Mr Ishmael. Just amazing.
The bloody sky pixie certainly made the mediaeval twats work hard!
Out here, in the sticks, mr mongoose, we have more gods than, you could, well, shake a stick at it.
The BBC, what are they like, mr BHS? Screenacres of shite and then, now and again, something like this, a visitation from the sky pixie.
Anyway, it is done, Mr Ishmael. Wednesday, the urchins will be taken to Winchester and Salisbury. "Compare and contrast, mongoose junior. Why is one thin and tall and one squat and small?"
BTW if anyone cares to understand just one line deeper... Structural Engineering 101 in words everyone can understand. It may as well have been called "Why Cathedrals don't fall down."
Lucky you, lucky them. Planning a September trip, here, to Durham amd York; the Alhambra must wait on Buster's passing. Couldn't take him, couldn't leave him, either.
And we went to Dover Castle today and popped into Canterbury on the way back, where I ate - or didn't eat - the worst lunch I have ever paid for. Money-grabbing savages. The Cathedral is very fine though,
Canterbury is very special. My dear mr narcolept managed to get himself locked inside all night once, when he was at school, for a bet. He is not prone to fancies but he insists to this day he heard voices and footsteps all around him.
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