The Cathedral Scene

The pessimism about the future of cathedral music expressed by senior musicians in the early years of the war turned out to be unjustified, at least in part. As men were gradually demobilized, organists and lay clerks returned to their posts, including John Dykes Bower to St Paul’s, Gerald Knight to Canterbury, William McKie to Westminster Abbey, and Boris Ord to King’s. Of course, not all lay clerks wanted to return to the choirstalls, and recruitment would prove an increasing problem for choirs outside the capital, since remuneration generally remained pitifully small, and both accommodation and suitable day-time work were in short supply. The cathedrals themselves faced severe financial problems, not least on the fabric front; even if they had not suffered war damage, inability to carry out much routine maintenance during that time, inevitably created a post-war backlog of work. Music could hardly be a priority in the circumstances. Chorister recruitment remained a lesser issue, although the declining viability of small dedicated choir schools increasingly confronted the authorities, a problem to which they would find varying solutions as the century advanced.

The post-war years were dedicated to the restoration of traditional routines, even if it was now generally admitted that, outside London, the final knell for weekday choral Matins was being sounded – Chester, Durham, Worcester and York were among a handful still singing Matins on some weekdays (usually no more than two) in the 1950s.

HENRY SHARPE's JOURNALS, 1830 AND 1840–7

High up on the wall in a half hidden, dusty corner of Hampstead Parish Church is a marble plaque dedicated to the memory of Henry Sharpe (1802–73), the wording of which sparks one's curiosity:

Henry Sharpe Merchant. This monument was raised by those who derived benefit in their youth from his efforts for their instruction and who, though scattered through the world, unite to perpetuate the memory of a life devoted to the good of others.

‘Mr. Sharpe was a man whose memory ought to be treasured in Hampstead. … His work in the parish is very inadequately recorded by the Mural tablet in the parish church. To me it has long been a matter for wonder and regret that a no more fitting record of such a valuable life has yet been given to the public.’

Thus wrote George Potter, one of Hampstead's local amateur historians, in 1907. Perhaps this remarkable journal, only recently rediscovered, will, after nearly two centuries, provide that record. In 1985, Malcolm Holmes, Camden's archivist, was offered a collection of papers in connection with the Sharpe family, by a Mr Morel, living at Moreton-in-Marsh. Malcolm drove up to the Cotswolds and collected several large boxes. Camden lacked sufficient resources to catalogue the collection, and it sat on a shelf in the recesses of Camden Archive Library, unexamined for another three decades.

The Introduction mentioned that the Greek categories of god, hero, and human do not map exactly onto Old Norse categories. Scandinavian sources, as they are known today, do not prominently feature an intermediate group between humans and gods comparable to that of the Greek heroes. Scholarly writings on Old Norse literature in English frequently employ the term ‘hero’ to refer to (male) characters such as Helgi Hundingsbani, Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, Gunnarr and Hǫgni, Hamðir and Sǫrli, or the other memorable personalities of Old Norse (heroic) poetry and related texts. The term hero is also used more broadly to refer to protagonists of narratives. These characters are often largerthan- life, and the divine or numinous, mostly in the form of Óðinn or Valkyries, may irrupt into their lives at crucial points in their careers, but they are still firmly rooted in the human experience. The Greek heroes, on the other hand, are usually semidivine beings who are venerated after their deaths. While the Greek heroes fight monsters and various other supernatural creatures, the heroes of Norse heroic poetry chiefly confront human opponents. The obvious exception is Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, whose epithet refers to the dragon Fáfnir he killed in his youth. The Norse tales of these heroes, the heroic Eddic poems in particular, are also overwhelmingly tragic in tone and emphasize the disastrous events resulting from uncontrollable surges of emotions such as anger and pride. The certain outcome of this heroic emotional exuberance is death, and while the fame or orðstírr of the heroes does live on after their demise, temples are not erected in their honor, and they are paid no worship as they are unable to influence human affairs after their deaths.

THESE ARE DANGEROUS ideas, and not always in a good way. Karol Berger sees them pointing towards a terrifying post-political future, arguing that “[i]t is the central paradox of Götterdämmerung, and hence of the Ring, that it demonstrates the hopelessly utopian nature of the anarchist ideal that it promotes.” He assumes the primacy of “naturally isolated and egoistic individuals” and insists that Wagner's ideal is a community of sovereign individuals “held together by spontaneous sympathy, without any … mediation” provided by a social contract or law. This, like Marx's early communism, must entail despotism: “the abolishing of legal limits on individual freedom cannot but lead to the domination of the strong over the weak.”

Berger takes it for granted that we are “naturally isolated and egoistic individuals,” and he dismisses the possibility that this construction of experience could be a “contingent product of recent historical development.” From a global perspective, however, that is exactly what it is, and it is what Fichte, especially, had sought to deconstruct. To take it as something selfevidently true, as Berger does, is to limit the range of thinkable social and political possibilities, and that is a genuine problem. Whatever the merits of his solutions, if he is really proposing any, Wagner's philosophy and drama raise issues which cannot be so easily dismissed.

Theory aside, the man who created the character of Alberich knew how easily the unfettered will of the strong could overpower the needs of the weak.