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CANTILUPE JOURNAL

 

 

CURRENT ISSUE

Contents of Journal No. 4, Spring 2004

Movement and Stillness in Lent – The Dean -2-

Cathedral Upheavals (Ecclesiastes 3:5) - Andrew Eames -4-

Organ Transplants – Geraint Bowen -7-

The Last Supper and The Body of Christ: visual Meditation
Gillian Bell-Richards and Ruth Tiller -9-

Zimbabwe Experience – Esther de Waal -13-

Children in the Cathedral – Heather Tomlinson -17-

Exhibition Update -19-

Book Notice – Joan Williams -20-

Saint Sebald’s Column – Val Hamer -22-

Cathedral Calendar, February – May -23-

Cathedral Information -24-

 

Article Archive

From issue No. 3, Winter 2003:

A new icon for the Cathedral: A note by the Dean

The iconographer is not painting, he is building. The wooden panel has been prepared with a plaster surface and sanded repeatedly. He has drawn the image, an image he has made many times before. The holy light of heaven has been burnished down in gold leaf on the background. The first layer of pigment goes on, a dark violet red called caput mortum. With brushes becoming ever finer, other layers are applied, always lighter than the one before. Stage by stage the image builds. In the end, with the highlights being applied, the spirit permeates the flesh, both in the maker and the made. This is an icon.

These words from the pen of an icon writer give a glimpse into what we now have in the Lady Chapel of our cathedral – a glimpse into heaven.

The word ‘icon’ comes from the Greek eikon and means simply ‘image’. The word has come to refer specifically to a sacred image of the Orthodox Church, but in reality these special images have found a place in the life and worship of the wider church - Roman Catholic, Anglican and Free Church. We can see icons in several Anglican cathedrals – there is a fine set in Winchester Cathedral and, as hundreds of visitors enter Westminster Abbey, they are faced with two large icons near to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior – icons of Our Lord and of the Blessed Virgin. Here, at the very heart of the Church of England, icons are used to encourage visitors and pilgrims to pray and the number of candles always burning there suggests that these focuses of prayer are used continually.

According to the Orthodox Church, icons are not art at all, but a method of prayer. The art of the western tradition, by contrast, has developed differently and has ideas of originality and realism quite foreign to the icon painter. Thus one will never find statues in the Orthodox tradition and the style of icons varies very little – we will find minimal difference in style between icons painted hundreds of years ago and our new icon in the Lady Chapel. This tradition has no concept of ‘modern art’.

I found this such a helpful passage when thinking about the place of icons in our spiritual life:

It is not the viewer who judges the icon but the icon who judges the viewer. Rather than stimulating the senses and the passions (as does so much art), an icon exerts a calming influence, allowing the viewer to step free for a moment from all the concerns of everyday life. The large eyes, small mouths and thin noses of Christ and his saints are common features in iconography and represent the refining of the senses away from a materialistic vision of the world towards a spiritual one. The figures in icons stare out at us. They throw no shadows. They stand in the eternal realm and, if they do come to meet us, it is to take us back with them into that realm. The many elements of rhythm, colour, composition and harmony lead us into stillness.

Of course, not everyone will find such an approach helpful, but that is the beauty and wonder of what we can offer in the cathedral. We seek to allow God to speak to us in so many different ways: through the Word of God – through preaching and teaching – through music and art – through fellowship and welcome. My hope and prayer is that the presence of an icon will help many to find a new stillness in their lives.

The Lady Chapel seems an ideal place in which to place an icon as the image of the Mother of God has always been one which has been painted with special stillness and peace. Indeed, there has been a very small icon in the same place in the Lady Chapel for well over a year, and many have commented on the sense of stillness which it has imparted.

Our new icon is by Aidan Hart – once an Orthodox monk, now married and living in Pontesbury. His work can be seen in many churches – the church of the Ascension at Malvern has a particularly fine set. In this icon, we see Mary pointing at Jesus as the one to whom all look for their salvation and peace, while Jesus points to Mary as the one whom God chose for the great vocation of bearing God to the world. The whole image is one of mutuality and care and within it are many layers of meaning which will unfold as we learn to live and pray with the icon. It is one in a long tradition, with the title the Hodegetria, ‘she who shows the way’.

The icon was dedicated on 2 November. It is given by the Finch family in memory of Mrs Jane Finch’s mother, Madeleine Gelling. Mrs Gelling used to worship regularly in the cathedral; she died in 2002 and her funeral took place in the Lady Chapel. So this is a fitting gift in her memory as a mother and one who worshipped in the cathedral and who had a special affection for the Lady Chapel.

O Creator and Author of the human race, Giver of all Spiritual grace and Bestower of eternal salvation: send down your Spirit upon us who pray earnestly before these images of your Son and of your Saints; heal us from infirmity and every illness of body and soul and meet the needs of those for whom we pray, showing thereby your abounding love for humankind. For you are our sanctification, and to you we ascribe glory, to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever – and to the age of ages. Amen.

Michael Tavinor

From issue No. 2, Autumn 2003:

New Chamber organ for the cathedral

In June 2003 the cathedral took delivery of a new five-stop, one-manual chamber organ built by Kenneth Tickell of Northampton, who has supplied similar instruments to many other cathedrals and churches including Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral.

The purchase of the instrument, which was commissioned in September 2002 and which has cost a little over £20,000, has been made possible by a bequest in memory of Mrs Kitty Rainbow, who died in 1999. Mrs Rainbow was the wife of Prebendary Gerald Rainbow.

Its specification is as follows:

Stopped Diapason 8
Principal 4
Chimney Flute 4
Fifteenth 2
Sesquialtera II

Stopped Diapason has wooden pipes and the remainder are made of tin. The 54-note keyboard has naturals of African blackwood, and sharps of pearwood. The casework in natural oak includes pierced grillework details in Gothic tracery style which were specially designed so as to relate the instrument to its surroundings in the cathedral.
The organ has a foot pedal which enables any stops of 4 foot pitch and above which are drawn to be silenced. This makes contrasts of dynamic possible when no hands are free to change stops in the conventional way.
It also has a transposing device, enabling the instrument to be played at three different pitches, especially useful when working with period instruments which usually play a semitone lower than modern pitch.
The blower is contained within the case, which makes the instrument remarkably compact and fully mobile.
The organ was first used in the cathedral at the Eucharist held in the Lady Chapel for the Festival of the Friends on Saturday 14 June 2003. It has since been used a number of times at Evensong, for performance of the cathedral choir’s repertoire from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and it will also be used regularly with an orchestra in the performance of major works like Bach’s St John Passion.

Geraint Bowen
Organist & Director of Music at Hereford Cathedral

 

From issue No. 1, Summer 2003:

ST SEBALD’S COLUMN

Anyone on top of a column ought to be able to add up, and from my vantage point I am looking at some challenging figures. Next year the Diocese of Hereford will have to ask the parishes to contribute an overall increase in Share of at least 11% if a deficit of £250,000 is to be avoided. The basic reason for this situation is that the Church Commissioners have passed the future bill for clergy pensions to the dioceses, and by next year the full impact of this will hit Hereford because a reserve known as the Equalisation Account will have been used up. Throughout the diocese each deanery is considering whether it can meet this increase, or whether costs will have to be cut, which principally means a further reduction in the number of full-time clergy.

What about the cathedral? We are not assessed for paying the Share, because the dean and the two full-time canons are paid directly by the Church Commissioners. Yet the cathedral actually receives some benefits out of the Share. For example, the ministry at the cathedral of the archdeacon is paid for by the parishes out of the Share, as is an annual payment towards his housing in a cathedral property. On the other side of the balance sheet, the dean and chapter offers the cathedral and its resources of music and other facilities to the diocese free of charge for various diocesan occasions such as ordination services.

Moreover, the cathedral does make a voluntary payment to the Share each year, and the amount is currently in the region of £17,000. Other churches in the city with congregations and electoral rolls comparable in size to ours would be assessed for more than £40,000. Not everyone in these churches understands the full facts of the situation, and there is a feeling that the cathedral provides a home for worshippers who escape the burden of raising the Share, while enjoying the ministry of more priests than any other congregation can afford.

The whole diocese is being challenged to a higher stewardship at this time, springing from a more generous response to God in our worship. The cathedral has already given a lead in this through the dean’s appeal for committed giving and its impressive results. Now what should the cathedral do? Increase its contribution to the diocese next year by 11%? Accept full assessment for the Share on the basis that it has a parish (Saint John the Baptist) and appoints members to the deanery synod? Make its own review of its contribution to Share? How can we make the column of figures in the 2004 budget add up?

John Tiller

 

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