How to conduct a Tallis motet in a cardboard cathedral

To undertake a concert tour of New Zealand’s cathedrals at the moment is to be constantly reminded of the destructive power of nature and how dogged people can be when the chips are down. The list of buildings that the earthquake of February 2011 destroyed in the centre of Christ-church includes the Anglican cathedral, which, shorn of its bell tower and west end, will have to be entirely pulled down sooner or later. The square outside it looks like a war zone without the bullet holes. Other cities such as Napier, itself rebuilt after an earthquake in 1931 and made into an Art Deco jewel, are facing up to the reality of having to dismantle their principal buildings to make them quake-proof, as has happened in Wellington.

The immediate answer in Christchurch has been to throw up a cathedral made partly of cardboard, designed by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. I was asked to conduct a performance of Tallis’s 40-part motet Spem in alium in there recently, which caused me suddenly to become very interested in the acoustic properties of cardboard-clad spaces. There isn’t much to go on in this area of research, and I was only slightly heartened to discover that it is not the entire building which is made of cardboard, but only the casing of the otherwise metal supports that spring on both sides from the top of the chancel wall to the roof. Many other, more decorative pillars in the building, for example those of the choir-stalls and the entrance lobby, are also made of densely packed and highly polished cardboard pieces, which have become an iconic leitmotif for the building. But it is metal that holds the whole edifice up, and plastic through which the outside light shines in.