Britten’s Blackadder moment

‘What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?’ We’ve heard a lot, lately, of the knell that tolls through the opening bars of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, and at Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral it was played on actual church bells. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s percussionist Graham Johns has had a set specially cast, and as he struck them video screens relayed the moment all the way down the cathedral’s length. The orchestra was a one-off, assembled half-and-half from the RLPO and the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover (the conductor Andrew Manze holds positions in both cities), and this was a major civic occasion, attended by gold chains of all sizes and preceded by speeches from city worthies.

In truth, though, you could whistle ‘The Frog Chorus’ in Liverpool Cathedral and it’d still inspire awe. Giles Gilbert Scott’s immense structure doesn’t so much echo the music performed within it (though that echo is as vast as everything else) as absorb and transfigure it. Stand on the corner of Gambier Terrace and Upper Duke Street and the cathedral erupts from the sandstone gorge of St James’s Cemetery as if the rock itself is thrusting towards heaven. Construction started in 1904 when Liverpool was the second port of the Empire. By the time it was finished, the city had been reduced to the butt of glib jokes. Yet there it stands, this stupendous physical affirmation of faith and endurance: perhaps the last building in European history to be started in the full knowledge that it would take more than one lifetime to complete.