THE programme Gareth Malone’s Messiah (BBC1, Good Friday; BBC1 and BBC2, Easter Day) was moving, joyful, and liturgically appropriate viewing for the Triduum. We followed the acclaimed choirmaster as he auditioned and trained eight amateurs to sing Handel’s classic oratorio, for a grand performance in Llandaff Cathedral. Malone had just 12 weeks to get them ready for the big day.
The choir of eight were a diverse bunch, including Harry, who was deaf in one ear, and admitted that his only experience of singing was in “the shower or the car”. We also met Nia, who spoke of her Jamaican parents’ being refused entry to a church when they first came to Britain. Messiah unleashed a complex web of emotions for all of the participants. Interspersed between the rehearsals was fascinating historical background to the composer.
But this was not just an exploration of people learning to sing: it was also about their interaction with the story of Jesus, as told through a sublime piece of music. While a range of beliefs were represented in the choir, from atheist to Christian, a group discussion identified faith, hope, and the concept of being saved as dominant themes raised by singing this particular work. Providing spiritual commentary was Canon Jarel Robinson-Brown, Team Vicar in the Roath and Cathays Ministry Area, Llandaff. He reflected that the piece brought Jesus to life and made him present. As one participant said, singing it “feels like an act of worship”.
I enjoyed this enormously. Malone says that he originally came to the story of Jesus’s life through Handel’s Messiah. He won’t be the only one; for that is the power of choral music: it is a uniquely transcendent conduit to the story of God.
The historian Dr Lucy Worsley has been following the restoration of Notre-Dame since the devastating fire on 15 April 2019. Rebuilding Notre-Dame: The last chapter (BBC2, 14 April) was the final programme in the series — and what better visual metaphor for Easter than this, a monument to Christian worship which appeared to be completely destroyed but has risen from the ashes?
The sheer scale of the task that faced the builders is mind-blowing: donors have raised more than £800 million to restore Notre-Dame to more than its former glory: a work that has included more than 1000 oak beams and lead sheets for the roof, freshly quarried limestone for vaulting, hand-painted shrines, and gargoyles newly cast from molten lead.
The project, as described by Dr Worsley with characteristically impish charm, was a work of amazing collaborative genius. A triumph over disaster, and the perfect story to echo that of the promise of Easter: renewed hope, and resurrected life after death.
