Considering Canterbury Cathedral. III. Thinking & singing

Sharratt, Bernard2024

Books

Find it!
Remove Considering Canterbury Cathedral. III. Thinking & singing from your current list Save Considering Canterbury Cathedral. III. Thinking & singing to your current list

Total copies: 1

Summary

Canterbury Cathedral, said a six year old visitor, is ‘a big building full of stories’ and it ‘smells of history’. It’s also a World Heritage site which attracts thousands of tourists who briefly wander around, take some photos, and leave. Probably impressed, and admiring, but often puzzled. In a short visit it’s hard to pin down the ‘half-formed thoughts’ and elusive responses the cathedral can prompt or provoke. Perhaps about history, time, death, the past, but also about art, science, money, philosophy, belief, politics. And why for a thousand years monks spent most of their time singing. The cathedral is large and this long essay considers a range of topics. In the first part I tried to think about history and historians, the past, death, and time. The second part was concerned with some issues around art and iconoclasm, with aspects of the history of science, and problems about money or economics. This third part is concerned with the odd business of thinking, focussed on Anselm, the 'ontological proof', artifical thinking, and finally with music, from 'Gregorian' liturgical chant to composers such as Power, Dunstable, Tallis, and Schoenberg. Taken together all three volumes to try to get into focus some of those half-formed thoughts. It’s not a guide book, or a religious meditation, but a reflection of fifty years of being asked to show friends and family ‘around the cathedral’. And being intrigued by the complex experience of this unique place.