Introducing: 'Hark! The Stories Behind Our Favorite Christmas Carols'

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Hark! The Stories Behind Our Favorite Christmas Carols"

Episode: The Coventry Carol

Podcast: The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J. (America Media)
Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Maggie Van Dorn
Key Guests: Richard Cook, Malvern Carville, Kate Massey, Rachel Maughan

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Overview

This episode is a special feature of the "Hark" podcast shared on "The Spiritual Life", exploring the story, history, and enduring meaning of "The Coventry Carol," a haunting Christmas carol from medieval England. Maggie Van Dorn and her guests unpack the carol’s origins in medieval mystery plays, its chilling message rooted in the Massacre of the Innocents, its miraculous survival over centuries, and its profound resonance in the shadow of World War II. Along the way, the episode delves into the musicology of the carol and its emotional power in times of grief and hope, particularly at Coventry Cathedral.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Coventry Blitz and the Carol's 20th Century Rebirth

• Setting the Scene: The episode opens with recounting the 1940 air raid ("Operation Moonlight Sonata") that destroyed Coventry Cathedral during WWII.
  • “The bombing actually started at 7:30 in the evening and the all clear didn’t go off until just before 8:00 the following morning. Waves and waves were coming in one after the other, so it was 12 hours of solid bombing.” (Malvern Carville, 02:04)
• BBC Christmas Broadcast: Despite devastation, the BBC broadcast its Christmas carol service from the cathedral’s ruins, featuring the Coventry Carol.
  • “Here around me in the ruins are the few we could muster of the cathedral choir, and they’re going to sing our ancient Coventry carol.” (Provost Dick Howard, 03:42)
• Message of Hope: Provost Howard’s address called listeners towards a “kinder, more Christ childlike world” (03:27).

2. The Carol’s Scriptural and Theatrical Origins

• Not a Typical Christmas Carol: The Coventry Carol does not focus on Christ’s birth, but the Massacre of the Innocents ordered by King Herod, as told in Matthew’s Gospel.
  • “This carol is not about the birth of Christ, at least not directly. It’s about the terrible events surrounding Jesus’ birth.” (Maggie Van Dorn, 07:55)
• Medieval Roots: The carol originated in the “Shearman and Tailors’ Pageant” – part of the Coventry mystery plays performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi.
• Pageant Structure: Malvern Carville describes the “pageant” as a mobile stage, like a medieval parade float, upon which scenes from Jesus’ life were performed (19:25–19:52).

3. The Massacre of the Innocents: Fact, Symbol, and Theology

• Historical Debate: Scholars question the historicity of the massacre; only Matthew’s Gospel recounts it, with no mention in other contemporary sources like Josephus.
  • “There’s a lot of indirect evidence in favor of this event happening, or at least…being plausible…but King Herod was a pretty awful human being.” (Richard Cook, 12:25)
• Theological Echoes: Matthew may have shaped his narrative to parallel Moses’ story in Exodus—infant boys threatened by an oppressive ruler—framing Jesus as a second Moses (14:00–14:20).
• Deeper Hope:
  • “Even in the depths of that despair, actually there is hope. And the point about it… is that the Herods of this world don’t ultimately win.” (Richard Cook, 15:21)

4. The Carol's Survival and Rediscovery

• Suppression and Preservation: The plays were suppressed post-Reformation for being “too Catholic,” but a series of tradesmen and antiquarians kept records—Robert Crewe in 1534, and Thomas Sharp in the 1800s (23:14–25:07).
  • “Twice in history, this carol was nearly extinguished…And yet each time this song was saved by an ordinary tradesman rising like a phoenix from the ashes.” (Maggie Van Dorn, 26:45)
• Victorian Revival: After the original manuscript was lost in a fire, Sharp’s transcriptions led to a renewed interest in the carol, framing it as a Christmas piece.

5. The Music: Lament and Hope in Sound

• Haunting Quality & Modes: The carol’s “modal” harmonies, absence of steady rhythm, and use of the "Picardy third" (ending a minor song on a major chord for a ray of hope) bring tension between grief and comfort.
  • “It’s in a mode, and to us, it mostly probably sounds quite minor, quite dark. But then you’ll get the raised third...so you get that right at the end—‘Bye bye, luly, lulay’—it’s like just a bit of sunshine peeking through.” (Rachel Maughan, 42:18)
• Musical Dissonance: Use of “false relation” (clashing notes) intensifies the pain and tension of the carol’s subject (44:10).
  • “It can kind of, like, make you think, ‘Oh, someone’s just sung a wrong note’...but actually it’s just adding colors to the whole carol.” (Rachel Maughan, 45:35)
• Lullaby Structure with Uneven Rhythm:
  • “It changes every single bar…keeps you on your toes…a rocking, but slightly uneven rocking. I’m not sure the baby would like that.” (Rachel Maughan, 47:08)

6. The Carol as Lament, Solidarity, and Instrument of Peace

• Modern Resonance: The carol’s theme—inconsolable mothers mourning children—mirrors suffering today wherever innocents are threatened by violence or war.
  • “There are mothers and fathers…and godparents around the world today who cannot keep them safe from the world’s dangers, but still are loving them and comforting them in that space.” (Kate Massey, 51:55)
• Hope via Presence, Not Resolution:
  • “There is no place where God isn’t. And God doesn’t leave us in these places of suffering…[the carol] has that poignant beauty. And again, it sustains our soul as all beauty does.” (Kate Massey, 52:00)
• Reconciliation Mission: From the ruins, Coventry Cathedral formed relationships in Germany, symbolized by the Cross of Nails—committing to arts, forgiveness, and reconciliation (53:10).
  • “We may never love perfectly, but we’ve got to give it our best shot...just because we can’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t try.” (Kate Massey, 55:12)

7. The Science and Spirituality of Singing in Grief

• Physiological Healing: Group singing, especially of lullabies, soothes trauma and bonds communities.
  • “Singing stimulates the vagus nerve…the calming effect goes both ways to mother and child. So there is great wisdom in singing through crises and even about crises.” (Maggie Van Dorn, 56:49)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Carol’s Lament:
  “The theme basically is the women… clutching their children to their breast and they’re saying, ‘Quiet, quiet, please…Herod’s coming, his men are coming…’ It’s fear. The carol is pure fear.”
  – Malvern Carville (21:27)

• On Hope in Suffering:
  “Even in the depths of that despair, actually there is hope… the Herods of this world don’t ultimately win…”
  – Richard Cook (15:21)

• On Forgiveness After the Blitz:
  “Provost Howard wrote in chalk just the words Father Forgive… it’s not just about forgiving our enemies…it’s about all of us seeking forgiveness for the part we play in the things that damage our shared life and damage the world…”
  – Kate Massey (32:38)

• Emotional Authenticity of the Carol:
  “Christmas is a time we associate with joy… it can seem uncomplicatedly happy, but actually that’s not the world we live in, and that’s not the world that Jesus came into.”
  – Kate Massey (50:12)

• Music as a Conduit for Reconciliation:
  “Art gives our hearts opportunity to practice the emotions that go with reconciliation… lament and hope, despair and love…”
  – Kate Massey (34:55)

• On the Power of Singing:
  “We’re creating space between the trauma and our response and filling that space with the sweet and sometimes surprising vibrations of song.”
  – Maggie Van Dorn (57:31)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:28 – Fr. Jim Martin introduces Maggie Van Dorn’s "Hark" podcast and the Coventry Carol episode
• 01:53–04:16 – Narrative of the Coventry Blitz and BBC carol broadcast in the ruins
• 06:05–07:55 – Historical and scriptural background of the carol’s theme
• 09:16–15:21 – Richard Cook on scriptural source, historical debate, and symbolic meaning
• 17:04–21:53 – Malvern Carville on pageant origins and performance
• 23:14–26:45 – Carrol’s preservation by Robert Crewe and Thomas Sharp
• 28:38–31:24 – WWII bombing aftermath, resilience, and cathedral ruins
• 32:24–35:33 – Provost Howard’s “Father Forgive” and the work of reconciliation
• 36:11–47:59 – Rachel Maughan’s musical analysis and demonstration at the Coventry Cathedral organ
• 50:12–56:14 – Reflection on the carol’s relevance for suffering, hope, and justice
• 56:49–57:31 – Singing as physiologic and spiritual healing
• 60:50–62:16 – King’s College Choir sings “The Coventry Carol” (episode closes)

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Conclusion

The Coventry Carol emerges not only as a piece of historical music, but as a dynamic spiritual tool—giving voice to lament, embodying hope in suffering, and building emotional solidarity across centuries. From ancient pageants, through wartime devastation, to contemporary worship, it invites listeners to sit with sorrow, heal through music, and remember that hope and mercy are the heart of Christmas.

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For further listening and reading, visit:
www.americamagazine.org/thespirituallife

Transcript

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

My name is Percy Jackson.

[Fr. Jim Martin]

Getting in trouble is like breathing for me.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

The hit series returns to Disney and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

For the key to our survival, three.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Of you must quest to the Sea of Monsters.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Let's go do the impossible.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Percy Percy Jackson and the olympians new season two episode premiere December 10th on Disney plus and Hulu. Learn more at disneyplus.

[Fr. Jim Martin]

Com Whatson hey everyone, it's Fr. Jim Martin. I hope you're having a blessed and prayerful Advent season. Our team is busy working on an all new season of the spiritual life, so stay tuned to this podcast feed in the new year for many more wonderful conversations, spiritual insights and surprising guests. For now though, I'd like to give you a little Christmas gift. My wonderful producer Maggie Van Dorn, whom you know, has created a podcast on the world's most beloved Christmas carols. It's called the Stories Behind Our Favorite Christmas Carols and in each episode she takes you on an amazing historical and spiritual journey of these songs that proclaim the birth of Christ. You can find it wherever you're listening to this podcast and I'll link to it in the show notes. It really is quite wonderful and it mixes some history with some music and some spirituality. Pretty unique as far as I know. You'll love it. So here as a gift is the first episode of the new season of Hark on the Coventry Carol. So happy Advent and happy caroling from all of us at America Media. God bless you.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

On the evening of the 14th 15th of November, German Germany launched their largest aerial raid of the war on the city of Coventry.

Over 500 bombers flew over the city in repeated waves and launched incendiaries and heavy bombs across the city. The bombing actually started at 7:30 in the evening and the all clear didn't go off until, I think just before 8:00 the following morning. Waves and waves were coming in one after the other, so it was 12 hours of solid bombing.

[Provost Dick Howard]

I am speaking from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. Six weeks ago the enemy came and hurled down fire and destruction upon our city from the sky. All through the long night so many lives were lost, so many homes destroyed.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

So the BBC every Christmas would have a Christmas Carol service which would be broadcast across the Empire and clearly the only place the obvious place to choose for the broadcast for that year was Coventry Cathedral and a service was held in the ruins and our cathedral nave.

[Provost Dick Howard]

And chancel utterly burnt and brought to the ground.

[Kate Massey]

Provost Howard famously spoke about building a kinder more Christ childlike world.

[Provost Dick Howard]

We are trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge. We are in brave spirits and can wish the Empire a courageous Christmas.

Here around me in the ruins are the few we could muster of the cathedral choir, and they're going to sing our ancient Coventry carol.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

I would describe it as much more subdued and subtle. There's a little bit of a haunting tone that's sitting with me in a way I'm not sure what to do with or think about. You can't have the incredibly hopeful carols.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

That you cling to without having a reason to cling to them, which is being aware of.

[LifeLock Advertiser]

They are your own weariness.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

You have to have the full story of the Nativity. In the early years of the church, there was good and bad.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

That, for me, is actually what this carol's about. When we know that there is darkness and sadness around us, sometimes we just have to sit with that for a bit.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

In a way, it's festive in its own melancholy way.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Welcome to Hark, a podcast about the meaning and the making of our favorite Christmas carols. I'm your host, Maggie Van Dorn, and over the four weeks of Advent, we're unwrapping one song at a time. We'll look at the musical development of these jingles, along with the religious and cultural messages baked into their lyrics. And if you can believe it, this is our fifth season of Hark. I want to thank you, our faithful listeners, for another round of caroling. And if you've just discovered Hark, welcome. I know you're going to love this season. And the good news is that we have a whole bundle of episodes from seasons past for you to binge hear the stories behind carols like Joy to the World, oh, Come All Ye Faithful, and In the Bleak Midwinter, just to name a few.

On this episode of Hark, we're turning the pages of history all the way back to the 13 and 1400s, where this Carol originated from a series of medieval theater pageants. We'll unpack the dark scriptural tale it tells and how it became an unlikely symbol of Christian hope in the middle of the Second World War.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

This.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This is the story of the Coventry Carol.

Okay, so I have to level with you. This is not a carol I'd heard before this year. And when I first listened to it, I thought, this is a beautiful choral piece that could lull me to sleep or maybe even contemplative prayer. But what are they singing.

Right away? It feels like a lullaby. And because I know, it's a Christmas carol. I'm quick to assume the little tiny child must be the baby Jesus. But then a couple verses in, we hear these lyrics.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

In his own sight.

O young children to slay.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Herod the king in his raging charged he hath this day his men of might in his own sight all young children to slay. This carol is not about the birth of Christ, at least not directly. It's about the terrible events surrounding Jesus birth as chronicled in the Gospel of Matthew, that is the massacre of the Innocents.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

And this particular scene, which includes the Coventry Carol, a group of women came in, the mothers of Bethlehem, holding bundles of rags that were like babies. And then suddenly a group of soldiers appeared with swords, attacked them. The bundles were thrown to the ground, and actually what we saw looked like human flesh. And, you know, the whole audience utterly shocked. I remember somebody shouting out, no. It was a visceral and gripping thing. Then we suddenly, just plaintively began to hear these words. My name is Richard Cook. I've been ordained nearly 40 years. And all that time I've been working in the Diocese of Coventry, so connected with Coventry Cathedral.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Richard has many connections to the Coventry Carol. He's seen theatrical reenactments of the play that produced the carol like the one he just described, and he's serving as an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Coventry.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

These days, I'm down in a group of villages just south of Stratford on Avon. It's a part of. Part of the countryside which is very close to the Cotswolds, which I know a lot of people from other parts of the world have visited.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Richard's parish is also where the famous author J.R.R. tolkien grew up.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

And when you know that and you go around our villages, you kind of realize that the houses he describes as hobbit houses were based on these little thatched houses with round windows and very low doorways and things like that. So you kind of half expect a Hobbit to appear from one of them from time to time.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Before we go any deeper down the Hobbit hole, let's return to the scripture passage that inspired our carol.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

So this is from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 2, verses 16 to 18.

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem and who were 2 years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah Wailing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because they are no more.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

So this is a scene that has been very dramatically depicted in art and in our case, music. And I think because it is such a chilling story, we all remember it and know it well. Except that when I began my research on this Carol and the story, I saw that many scholars don't necessarily believe that it's historically accurate, that it might have been a literary invention of Matthew. What reasons do you suppose scholars have for thinking this didn't happen, historically speaking?

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

Yeah, the main reason, I think, is that we don't hear anything about this event other than in Matthew's Gospel. So it's not mentioned in any of the other contemporary sources.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

In other words, if the massacre really happened, why is it that only Matthew includes the account in his Gospel? Why doesn't Luke mention it? Well, the tricky part of this reasoning is that there are a lot of stories that don't line up across the Gospels. For instance, Matthew mentions magi following a star, whereas Luke describes shepherds summoned to the manger. A stronger case might be that when we turn to ancient historians like Josephus, who wrote about many events in 1st century Judea, there's not so much as a footnote about this massacre. But for Richard, the lack of evidence doesn't disprove the possibility that this event occurred.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

If you're doing ancient history, then you begin to realize that actually it's very hit and miss what has direct evidence and what doesn't. There's a lot of indirect evidence in favor of this event happening, or at least in favor of it being a very plausible thing to have happened. I think that's probably as much as we can say. King Herod was a pretty awful human being. If you read up some of the stories about him, King Herod is like Henry VIII on steroids, really. Nobody who was close to him was safe. And I think one of the things that you, you see in that is that Herod's particular fear was other people claiming his throne. He didn't have a direct claim to the throne.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Throne.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

He was always worried about people who did. A lot of the murders within the family were of members of the previous royal family. The whole stuff that we get in the Gospels about Jesus being of the line of David would almost certainly be something Herod was anxious about. So if you add those things together, the fact that also Bethlehem at the time would have been pretty small place. So if the deaths happened as Matthew describes, you're probably not Talking about more than 12 or 20 children, that would mean that in the scale of most of Herod's kind of crimes, it was pretty minor. But of course, the people who would remember are the families who'd lost their children. And it's that emotion that the carol picks up, really.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

There's another reason why some scholars believe that this massacre is by literary design rather than historical fact.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

The suggestion is that actually what Matthew has done and is doing actually through the beginning of his gospel is patterning the story of Jesus on the pattern of Israel.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

So the massacre of the innocents surrounding Jesus birth is meant to echo the story found in Exodus, where Pharaoh massacres the Jewish children in Egypt.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

Moses himself, you might remember, is one of the ones who potentially is going to be killed. Pharaoh gives an order that the baby should be killed. In fact, someone takes pity on Moses. He ends up the baby in the bulrushes and is found by Pharaoh's daughter and later on realizes that he's part of the nation of Israel.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Certainly the parallels are there, but Richard isn't convinced. This is only for poetic effect.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

I mean, I have a kind of a theory that if Matthew was writing a gospel today, he'd be using hypertext in it for his quotations. Because I think often what we find with these quotations that appear in Matthew's gospel is that there's much more to them and much greater depth of meaning than we often have noticed.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

A reminder that after Matthew describes the massacre, he quotes the prophet Jeremiah saying, a voice was heard in Ramah wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because they are no more.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

If you trace back that quotation, which on the surface, you know, fits well, this is a neat way of underlining the thing. But if you trace it back actually to the book of Jeremiah, the thing that jumps out at you is that that verse is the only one that is about sadness and mourning. All the rest of the chapter is about hope and looking to the future. I think what Matthew's trying to do is, is to point out to us that even in the depths of that despair, actually there is hope. And the point about it, in a way, is the Herods of this world don't ultimately win, however much pain and suffering we go through. And that is quite an important Christmas message.

[Kate Massey]

Actually.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This message of hope amid despair is very fitting for Christmas. And Matthew's account of the massacre paints an awfully vivid picture of. Of the violent world Jesus was born into. But we have to admit this carol Brings an unexpected angle to the Christmas Nativity story. The usual suspects, shepherds, magi and the manger scene are nowhere to be found. So whose idea was it to make this a Christmas carol?

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Actually, I'll start off by saying it's not a Christmas carol.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This is Malvern Carville. He's a local historian, born and raised in Coventry. And I actually got to travel to Coventry, England this year to speak to many of our guests on this episode, which was helpful because as you'll hear in just a minute, this city is chock full of history and Malvern is the perfect guide.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

I'd already been doing a little bit of family history research and I discovered that my ancestors, the Carvell family, moved to Coventry in the 1770s. They were a tailor's by trade and they lived in a historic street called Spon street, which is just over the other side of the city from us.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Malvern's family boasts some serious genealogical roots in Coventry. But as for the Coventry Caryll, that takes us back to the Middle Ages.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

So the carol actually evolved through some pageants which were held in medieval times. I think one of the points to say is that very early on it got considerable royal patronage in 1218, Henry III, he was crowned in 1216, and he was only nine at the time. But in 1218, he issued an authority for Coventry to have a great fair.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Wait, so an 11 year old king was.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

I mean, whether it was him or not, the chances are he will have had all sorts of regents and things like that around him. Who would have said, this is what you need to do.

Now? The great fair. And the day of the great fair was, well, it's actually a week. It covered the feast of Corpus Christi. So it was connected religiously, but it was also connected with the trades guilds that were also growing up.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Trade guilds were like the first unions in that they protected the interests of artisans and merchants working in the trade.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

So, for instance, you'd have the cooks and the fishermen, you'd have the butchers, the bakers and the millers, but you also have the tailors and shearmen.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

In those days, there was a close knit, even symbiotic relationship between the Catholic Church and the guilds. Merchants supplied the church with cloths, tapestries, stone masonry, and many churches named a side chapel or creche after these craftsmen and their patronage. In medieval churches that are still standing, you can often see symbols of the trade literally embedded in stone and stained glass. Anyways, it's the tailors and Sherman's Guild who sponsored the Coventry Carol. Or rather the pageant that brought the song to life.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

These days, a pageant, we think of a grand exhibition with lots and lots of things going on. The pageant is actually the staging. It's a vehicle, a wheeled vehicle that was pulled along, probably pulled by people, and had a stage erected on it.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Kind of like we would see at Mardi Gras today.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. So you'd have a large stage with a set on it, and then a play would be performed on that pageant.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

The pageant would have ran through Jesus entire life, starting with the Nativity, but continuing through his passion and death and even to the end times. So, again, not exclusively Christmas themed.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

I have actually got the section where the Coventry Carol first comes in and is performed.

[Kate Massey]

Yeah.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

So it starts off Mary, meekly, Joseph, my non spouse toward that country let us repair at Egypt to some kind of house. God grant his grace safe to come there.

Here the women, this is the stage note here. The women come in with their childer singing them and Mary and Joseph got away clean. So that's the point where they escaped to Egypt. And then the first woman says, I, Lola, my childer wondrously sweet and in my niamis I do hit keep, because that hit should not cry. The second woman says, that babe that is born in bedlam so meek he saved my child and me from villainy. The third woman says, be still, be still, my little child. That Lord of Lord is safe both thee and me for ered hath sworn with word is wild that all young childer slain there shall be.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

It sounds like the women are singing lullabies to their babies to keep them quiet, perhaps to hide them from Herod and his soldiers.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

That is exactly it. That's exactly correct. So the theme basically is the women, they're clutching their children to their breast and they're saying, quiet, quiet, please, please don't make a noise. Don't make a noise. Herod's coming, you know, his men are coming. They're coming to kill you. If you make a noise, it's going to be the end. It's fear. The carol is pure fear.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

We don't know who first wrote the Coventry carol, the text or the tune. What we do know is that Coventry's mystery plays themselves date back to the 13 and 1400s. The carol appears much later, in the early 1500s, written into the Shearman and Taylor's pageant as Malvern described earlier. These were lively civic performances that drew huge crowds year after year. But as England moved through the upheavals of the Reformation, the plays found Themselves on increasingly shaky ground.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

From 1540 onwards, the play started to become controversial from a religious point of view, because we have Henry, then we have Edward vi, who was Protestant. We then go back to Mary, who is Catholic, and we then go back to Elizabeth, who is Protestant again.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And these plays are controversial because they're too Catholic.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Yes, yes. They quaintly use the word laid down, which basically means put to one side.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And that phrase shows up in the city records. The plays weren't banned outright, they were laid down, quietly set aside as the Reformation tightened its grip on anything that seemed to too Catholic. Fortunately, a few years before these plays were suspended, someone bothered to write them down.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

There was a chap called Robert Crewe and he was actually paid by the guilds to write down, transcribe the plays.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Records show that Robert Crewe was heavily involved in the play as an actor and stage manager. And around 1534, he wrote down the text of both the play play and the song. Okay, so we have the sheet music here. When is this from?

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

This is specifically dated 13 May 1591.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Wow.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

That we have not only the text, but the tune.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

Yes.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Of this song.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Yes. And this was written down by, say, a chap called Thomas Mordyke, who we believe was responsible for trying to organize this play in 1591. And he wrote the music then. Now, we don't know whether this is his original writing or whether it's just him arranging an older carol. I suspect it's him arranging the older carol and he's just setting it to his particular style.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

From the late 1500s onward, we don't hear much about the carol. It might have been lost to the ages were it not for the King. Keen interest of a man whose grave is just outside Coventry Cathedral. So, of course, Malvern and I went to pay our respects.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

What does the name say?

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Thomas Sharp.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Does that ring a bell?

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Yes, it does.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

So this is the gentleman we have to thank for the commentary, Carol, still being available and in existence today.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And he's buried right here.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

He is buried right here, yeah. Underneath rest the remains of Thomas Sharp. I can't read the rest, but.

Thomas Sharp was a hatter, and from a very young age, he was a keen historian and antiquarian.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Antiquarian is someone who's interested in antique.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Things, antiquities, the actual artifacts rather than the. The stories and everything. So. But he went through and he started looking into the old books that he could find. And amongst those books, he found the 1534 transcription by Robert Crewe of the Taylors and Shearman's play and the Weavers play. So it's around about that point that the Coventry Carol starts to come into consciousness, not just within the city, but starts to reach a slightly wider audience, but even so, not a great deal. We move on then to 1879 and the original manuscripts have all by this point been put into storage in the Free Library in Birmingham, which is about 20 miles away. And there's a fire and the original manuscripts are all destroyed.

Meaning the only record we've got is Thomas Sharp's transcriptions from 1817 and 1825. And this, I think, is the point where it starts to kick off the interest in the Carols.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Twice in history, this carol was nearly extinguished, first through Henry VIII's destruction of Catholic churches and monasteries and his suppression of Catholic coded arts, then again by a fire that destroyed the original transcript. And yet each time this song was saved by an ordinary tradesman rising like a phoenix from the ashes. And what's really interesting is that it actually grows in popularity after the Birmingham Library fire, and it's at this time that the song gets rebranded as a Christmas Carol. There would be at least one more moment in history when the Coventry Carol would rise from the ashes, and we'll hear that story after the break. Stay with us.

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[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

John Legend, Cheryl Crow, Elvis Costello and Alanis Morissette star in the MGM original series. Words and music, iconic artists, Sharon intimate performances and the stories behind the songs. New episodes Sundays on mgm.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

At the beginning of the episode, we heard Malvern describe the German air raid codenamed Operation Moonlight Sonata on Coventry in the middle of World War II.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Over 500 bombers flew over the city in repeated waves and launched incendiaries and heavy bombs across the city.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

It was the single most concentrated attack on a British city in World War II. A strike destroying around 2,300 homes, damaging tens of thousands more and claiming an estimated 568 lives.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Waves and waves were coming in one after the other, so it was 12 hours of solid bombing.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

At the center of Coventry stood the cathedral. It had survived more than five centuries of English turmoil But on this night, incendiaries would set it ablaze.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Provost Dick Howard, who was on fire duty on that evening, went up onto the roof, which was being covered in incendiaries, and together with his team, tried to flick the incendiaries off the roof. Unfortunately, they were forced to withdraw as the lead was melting and dross was falling down across. Across the. The whole of the building.

[Kate Massey]

But as the city was blitzed, people were taking shelter wherever they could. And through that night of bombardment, through that night of horror, of terror, they could still hear the bells of Coventry Cathedral chiming through the night. And so in the midst of all of that, there was this comfort of at least the cathedral's still there. At least the cathedral's still there. But in the morning, they found that it was simply that the bell tower was stayed standing and the rest of their beautiful cathedral was gone.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This is Kate Massey, rector of Arts and Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral. That is the new cathedral, built 22 years after the medieval cathedral was demolished.

[Kate Massey]

Okay, so we're up in the high altar area of the ruined cathedral. And in front of us, we have some stone steps.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

She's giving me a tour of the old cathedral's ruins.

[Kate Massey]

We have a stone altar. We have the big empty stone casings of what would have been incredible stained glass windows, but now they're just these kind of skeletal stone arched windows.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

It's difficult to convey the power and the pain of this place. I did a fair amount of research before I traveled to England. I read the stories of what happened here. I studied the photos, and yet, still, I wasn't prepared to feel what I did looking at the bones of this church.

[Kate Massey]

And behind the altar, we have this large wooden cross made of two beams slashed together. It's actually a replica of what we called the original charred cross. The original charred cross was something that on the morning after the attack, after the. The destruction of the cathedral, somebody climbed up into the bell tower, looked down, and saw these two beams crossed in amongst the rubble. And they took that sign of the cross as a sign of hope in the midst of all the. The devastation. And then behind the cross and behind the altar, we have words kind of carved into the stone in gold. And they say, father, forgive.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

It's these words, father, forgive that stop me in my tracks. Big capital letters, clear and direct. A petition for forgiveness, literally written from the ashes.

[Kate Massey]

Now, these words at some point after the destruction of the cathedral, we're not entirely sure when urban the myth says the following morning, but we know it wasn't then. But Provost Howard wrote in chalk just the words Father Forgive on the back wall of the cathedral. It's partly inspired by Jesus words on the cross, you know, father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. But he really intentionally left off the Zen. So it's just Father forgive. Because it's not just about forgiving our enemies. It's about all of us seeking forgiveness for the part we play in the things that damage our shared life and damage the world we share.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Standing in the ruins, looking at Provost Howard's prayer, the Christian message of forgiveness becomes real to me. Of course, to call oneself a Christian, you must be familiar with Jesus message to turn the other cheek or to forgive those who sin against you, not seven times, but 77 times. The cross itself is the ultimate sign of God's love and forgiveness. But it can be a hard message to accept when we are hurting.

[Kate Massey]

I know that what prophet Howard started that day was not popular in some parts of the city. There was a lot of trauma, a lot of hurt. I once spoke to a wonderful colleague, a really gorgeous. He was a retired priest and he was such a good friend to me. But he remembered being a young boy the morning after that blitz and saying, kate, if I could have found a German, I would have killed them. Not because he was a bad person, but just the trauma and the pain and the violence of what happened had hit them so hard. If we go back to Provost Howard, making that decision to work for peace with somebody who's caused such harm to yourself, to the community you serve and the building you love, the personal strength it must have taken to make that choice is quite astounding. The natural response is to say it's not fair and to push back. Reconciliation is something that can't be known in your head. It's got to be experienced in your heart.

What art does is art gives our hearts opportunity to practice the emotions that go with reconciliation, to feel some of those things, you know, lament and hope, despair and love, which are important emotions that we have to cultivate if we're going to do the work of peace building.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Perhaps it is for this reason that the choir sang the Coventry Carol in the ruins for the BBC Christmas broadcast that year. Surely these two, the cathedral and the carol, shared a history together.

For five centuries, this song and this space were intertwined, and at various points in history, each was consumed in flames. And more than just a storied connection, maybe singing this tale of lamentation allowed people to grieve and make space for the seeds of Forgiveness to grow.

So let's turn to the music and see what we find there.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Loli Lula, thou little tiny child.

Bye. Bye.

I'm Rachel Maughan. I'm the director of music at Coventry Cathedral.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Rachel is being modest. Not only is she the director of music at Coventry Cathedral, but she has a very impressive pedigree, including being the first female organist at St Paul's Cathedral, London in 1400 years.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yeah, yeah. So they hadn't had a female organist on staff ever. You know, it never got old, you know, going into work into such an amazing building and also just having like the keys for that building, these heavy, old fashioned keys.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Now we're of course talking about the Coventry Carol, very old carol that came from Coventry hundreds of years ago. When did you first hear the Coventry Carol?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

I confess I. I cannot pinpoint a date. And that's because I've been in church probably from in utero. I was a church chorister when I was a child and so it was just a carol that I've grown up with.

[Kate Massey]

Oh, wow.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

I've always known it. And I mean, I love Christmas and I love hearing all the Christmas music and it's very much part of the Christmas tradition for me.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Was it special then for you to come to Coventry Cathedral where the Coventry Carol originated?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Absolutely. That was like, oh, Coventry. I know Coventry because of the Coventry Carol. Yeah, definitely. It was like coming to a little bit of. Of a famous place, I guess. Because of the carol. Yeah.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Okay. Well, I've never been in an organ.

What do we call this, an organ?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

This is the Oregon Console. And these are the, the different keyboards.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

They're called manuals, if you can't tell. This is Rachel and I sitting at the Oregon Console. A first for me and for Hark. It's not every day that you get an up close tour of a church organization.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

They each have a name and a function. And the cool thing about the organ is that you can play them in any combination. So you can combine different keyboards, you can put all of them onto one keyboard, and this is how you get the full organ sound. And then you can add different ranks of pipes to these, which are called stops. So if I pull on one stop, so that says trumpet. So now I can play a trumpet on this key keyboard.

And so I can. Or I can put on the flute.

Oh, my goodness. Or I can put on everything at the same time, in which case, you know, you know, you put on everything and the trumpets and you have.

But that's just, that's just One manual?

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Yeah.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

So I can add stuff on all the different manuals. So then this is really what, the full sound like.

Orchestral trumpets on the top manual.

And they cut through everything so you can play at the same time.

[Kate Massey]

Anyway.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

That gives you a little.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

I don't think I've ever experienced such power before. You're, like, so powerful.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yeah, yeah. It's an amazing instrument.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Now, as we know, the subject of this carol is grim. And I'd bet that even without hearing the lyrics, you'd know that this is a solemn song. But if there's one thing I've learned from five seasons of Christmas carol reporting, it's that the notes and chords that we may register as sad today might not have struck folks as completely sad back then.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

I think the way we hear it now is also very different from how medieval or Renaissance ears would hear it. So it is modal.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

What does. What does modal mean?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Modal is just very roughly. It's sort of an old system of scales, basically. Now we mostly have music that's in major and minor keys, and modes were slightly different. Some of them are the same as major and minor keys, but some of them are different. So if you listen to a modal scale, it won't sound quite right. It is a way of saying, sort of thinking about it. And also, harmony was different back then. So to us, a major key or a major chord is. Is a stable, solid chord, as is a minor one, just of a different quality. Whereas in the medieval time, that would be considered an unstable chord, and they would have often finished things on an open chord, which is sort of an open fifth. So that third that determines whether the chord is major or minor would have just been missing.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Oh, wow.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

And so in this carol, you get a complete mixture of the open chords of the, you know, open fifth, and you get some major chords, but also you get minor chords, so you get a bit of everything.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

The other thing is, this song would have been one of a few that was performed in this play. And the arc of the play was everything from the Annunciation to the Massacre of Innocence. And so you're going to hear a big range of emotions within this song, but also the song is in the larger narrative arc. There's theater within this song.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Theater within it, yeah.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

There is also something that I have heard about this song, and I. I am no music mind, so you will have to explain this to me. But it's called the Picardi Third.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yes.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Can you tell us what that is?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

The Piketty Third. Yeah. So in music is when something often in a minor key ends suddenly with a major chord. So to us, it's like, oh, it's sad. And then it ends on a happy chord is a very simplistic way of describing it. And this carol is full of them again. So it's. It's in a mode. And to us, it mostly probably sounds quite minor, quite dark. But then you'll get the raised third for the final chord of a phrase or of the entire thing. So you get that right at the end. Bye bye Lou li Lu lay on the lay. It's like just a bit of sunshine peeking through. You have that raised third. And so to us, it sounds like a major chord, but throughout the whole Carolina, it kind of keeps switching.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

To hear what this sounds like, let's return with Rachel to the organ.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

So I'm going to take the first phrase and show you what I mean by that. Here it would sound. If I didn't raise the third.

Okay, that sounds completely normal. And within the key. Now I'm going to raise the third.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And it sounds warmer.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yeah, Warmer, brighter. We might say happier. But it's kind of a surprising note to put there because that. They've raised that middle note. That one used to be that one.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Right.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

So that's sort of an example of the. The Picardy third. And that happens throughout this piece. So it happens there and then again in the middle.

There it is again.

There is one other aspect of the harmony that I could mention. It's not necessarily in every version, but that's a false relation. And that's when you get two notes that are sort of seemingly clashing. So to explain it quite technically in this, it would be an F sharp in the soprano and an F natural, which is a semitone lower in the tenor. And those being sung at exactly the same time, it can kind of like make you think, like, oh, someone's just sung a wrong note. Yeah, but actually it's just like really crunchy and showing the pain maybe of what the subject is. It's a really expressive thing to do and just makes your ears perk up.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

What is the text that it's underscoring here? The mood that it's.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

I think it's just the pain of this carol. So it's Bye bye luly loo lay where it happens. Okay, so here it is.

So in case you missed it in slow motion, here's the. The three chords. So the chords that surround the middle chord with the false relation.

Yeah, so you hear that? It's those two notes Together. It sounds wrong, doesn't it? Yeah, it does, but.

It's just adding colors to the whole carol.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This is definitely surprising to me as a person not with a musical pedigree at all. I would think that you would avoid discordant sounds whenever possible. But actually, there is a purpose to them.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

There is a purpose to them. And there are different rules of harmony as time progresses and different conventions and how people would use discordant notes. But they definitely serve a purpose. They are part of, I guess, the storytelling of the music. And, yeah, they add color, they add mood. It's a very colorful thing to do.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

One of the other unusual features of the Coventry Carol is the rhythm and shifts in time signature. You don't need to be able to read music to feel the undulating sways of this song. And that makes sense if we remember that the song was written to emulate a lullaby. The trouble is, it's a lullaby that is anything but study.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

So it's written in a time before we had time signatures and before we had bar lines. So it's a very modern way of thinking about it, is changing time signatures, when actually it was just, I guess you could say free time.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

So let's hear this irregular rhythm on the organ.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

A lot of music, you'll have four beats in a bar, so it's going to feel like a march. It's going to feel like one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. But this one, it changes every single bar or, you know, nearly. So you'll get 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. One, two, three. One, two, one, two. It's hard to keep up with. Right? Yeah. And it's changing, so it kind of keeps you on your toes and it's a bit. Yeah, I think it lends itself to actually that rocking, but slightly uneven rocking. I'm not sure the baby would like that.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Yeah. Not steady. And it's not just the rhythm that rocks in free time. We hear a similar quality in the melody as well.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

The melody is centered sort of within a small vocal range, and it is quite simple, although rhythmically, again, it kind of changes. You can sense a sort of rocking motion, I think, with this music, which is good. It's a lullaby. You're rocking a baby to sleep. And then you get the descending lines that kind of have a melancholy quality to them.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Could you read those?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yeah. Like, you want me to sing?

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Sure.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

I love that I don't have perfect pitch and I have a cold right now. But, for instance, this poor youngling for whom we do sing that just very.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Sort of gently descends.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Yeah, it gently descends. And there's maybe some resignation to it also. That's an example of. And there are some different versions, maybe, where that last note, it could have been a Picardy third. This poor youngling for whom we do sing. Sing. Sometimes the tune does that.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Yeah.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

But in this instance, this poor youngling for whom we do sing, it goes down to the F natural there. And then finishing the tune, Bye bye.

And there you have again the B natural. So. Which creates the major chord at the end when most of this has been in the minor. So if I did that with a B flat instead, it would sound like this. Bye bye.

But whoever wrote this decided. No.

That it would end. Yeah, on A major. With. With maybe a bit of hope.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

A bit of hope amidst absolute horror and darkness. That's where the Coventry Carol leads us. But as I'm sure you can tell by now, this is no Jingle Bells.

[Kate Massey]

I think the Coventry Carol is a remarkable carol because Christmas is a time we associate with joy, with family, often with children, and it is a time that can seem uncomplicatedly happy, but actually that's not the world we live in, and that's not the world that Jesus came into.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

This is Kate Massey again. She leads the ongoing Ministry of Arts and Reconciliation at the cathedral today. And I asked Kate why she thinks this song continues to be a fitting carol for the season.

[Kate Massey]

So Jesus was born into a time of occupation, a time when his peers were at risk of violence in his own life. Later, he experienced, obviously, that same violence. I think for myself, having been a mother, having had that privilege, there's also something incredibly intimate about it, this mother singing to her child. And the way that parents and carers do when things are difficult, they try to protect their child, to soothe them. They can't stop the bad things happening, but they can be there and hold them. And, oh, I think what breaks my heart even more when I think of this carol is that there are mothers and fathers and aunts and godparents around the world today who are soothing their children, who are hungry, who are soothing their children, who are living through conflicts, who cannot keep them safe from the world's dangers, but still are loving them and comforting them in that space. I think it's an incredibly powerful carol from that point of view.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And how does that carol inspire hope?

[Kate Massey]

I think of Jesus as prepared to step into that space. It just brings home that. That knowledge that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there is no place where God isn't. And God doesn't leave us in these places of suffering and struggle, but inhabits them with us. And the carol, for all its melancholy and for all of its quite challenging and quite grim material within the lyrics, it has that poignant beauty. And again, it sustains our soul as all beauty does.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Kate isn't just waxing poetic. The ministry she leads of art and reconciliation has been doing the real hard work of peace building ever since Provost Howard committed to a path of friendship rather than vengeance that first Christmas after the Blitz.

[Kate Massey]

And that's what happened. So in 1947, Coventry Cathedral established its first partnership with a church in Kiel in Germany, and then went on to build relationships with lots of other centres in Germany.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

What began in French has grown into a worldwide network of 280 churches, charities, chaplaincies, peace building and retreat centers, school and other educational organizations that collectively call themselves the Community of the Cross of Nails.

[Kate Massey]

We have a shared symbol of the Cross of Nails, which came from somebody on the day after the bombing picking up a few medieval nails from the roof of the cathedral and binding them into the shape of a cross.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

I think it's one thing to strive for forgiveness and reconciliation in one's personal life, but imagining this in the context of a world war is almost inconceivable. Because while you can have a church community that is trying to enact the gospel message, you're living in a world that is on fire. Really. How do you think Reverend Howard and the community at that time was able to hold on to a sense of hope rather than futility in the midst of war?

[Kate Massey]

Gosh, I have got no idea. But I think your question, which was apt for them, is also quite apt for us today, isn't it? Because we are looking at a world which is very divided, where conflict is on the rise and how do we hold on to the aspirations of peace and forgiveness? The important thing actually about Provost Howard, they were able to have that vision of hope and peace and forgiveness. But there was still another four years of war to run. So the BBC World Service broadcast their Christmas service from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and. And Provost Howard famously spoke about building a kinder, more Christ childlike world.

[Provost Dick Howard]

We're going to try to make a kinder, simpler, a more Christ childlike sort of world in the days beyond this strife.

[Kate Massey]

And that's the quote, that's the sound bite that goes viral. But as my boss, the Dean, often points out, the thing that he says before is when this struggle is over, when this war is won. And there, obviously, in Nazism was something that had to be overcome as part of building that situation of peace and forgiveness. And so I think reconciliation is always a complex process because you're holding together things which may not be perfect this side of heaven. We might never get perfect justice, but we've still got to aspire to it. We might never know the whole truth, but we still need to seek truth. We may never love perfectly, but we've got to give it our best shot. So there's all these ingredients that make up reconciliation. Sometimes it can feel kind of conflicted, slightly, a compromised space working for reconciliation. But just because we can't do it perfectly doesn't mean to say we shouldn't try.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

When emotions are running high, things like forgiveness or even the theology of the incarnation, God with us can seem too lofty. So we need a bridge between the terrors of earth and the hope of heaven. We need something to soothe our nerves and calm our spirits. And you know what has been scientifically proven to do just that? Singing.

Especially singing with others. Singing stimulates the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body, which extends like a superhighway from the brain to various organs and helps regulate our stress response. When you activate the vagus nerve, the. You're lowering your heart rate, your blood pressure, and cortisol, the stress hormone. I imagine that the first people to discover the benefits of singing were mothers attempting to soothe their babies to sleep. The calming effect goes both ways to mother and child. And so there is great wisdom in singing through crises and even about crises. We're not ignoring the pain.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

We're.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

But we're also refusing to allow ourselves to be overtaken by it. We're creating space between the trauma and our response and filling that space with the sweet and sometimes surprising vibrations of song. And so, in this way, the Coventry Carol carries us into the Advent season.

Hark is a production of America Media, and we are so grateful for the opportunity to make this show for you each year. But you know what? There's a lot of talent, hard work, and dedication that goes into making this podcast. So I've invited our small but mighty team to introduce themselves and say a word about what they do for Hark.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

Hello, dear listener. I'm Ricardo da Silva, Hark producer with Maggie. That means I research the carols, edit the scripts, source the music, review the cuts, and find and prepare the unforgettable guests you hear on every episode.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

I'm Sebastian Gomes, Hark's executive producer.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

That means overseeing the whole production and.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

Being the podcast's chief advocate.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

My name is Kevin Christopher Roblez and I run all the in studio recordings and help with sound engineering.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

This is Will Gualtieri, a Joseph A.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

O' Hare Fellow at America and I assist with recordings, music acquisition and I produce short videos for Hark's promotion on social media. I'm James Bilodeau, sound designer and engineer on Hark. I help with technical and creative audio to transport you inside the stories of these carols.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

A special word of thanks to Mikko Zempla for capturing on the ground video and audio recordings in Covenant. As you might gather by now, we have an incredible team dedicated to making this show happen, but in a real sense, our team extends even further thanks to the generosity of so many musicians who offer us their musical gifts each year. Our thanks in this episode go to James Bilodeau, the King Singers and Signum Records, Brad Prevadoros, Matthew Pierce, Avene Dillon, Brad Theson, Cynthia Boehner, Salt of the Sound, Coventry Cathedral Girls Choir and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. Our theme music was produced by Frank Tuson. And speaking of support, the best way to show yours for Hark is by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine. You'll get access to articles about our Christmas carols along with news and analysis of Pope Leo and the King Catholic Church. It's easy to do, just go to america magazine.org subscribe lastly, we've created a fun way to play along in our Christmas Cheer this season. Each week we're releasing trivia questions about all the carols featured on Hark across five seasons. Because who doesn't love a good holiday brain teaser? This trivia is exclusively for America subscribers, so if you think you know your carols, become a subscriber and play [e-mail] Hark for America Media, I'm Maggie Van Dorn. Thanks for caroling with us.

We'll now conclude this episode with the Coventry Carol performed by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, singing under the direction of of the late Sir Stephen Kleibry, who led the choir for nearly four decades.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

We have this day.

Of night in his own sight.

All young children to save.

Poor child.

For thee.

And never more than.

[Fr. Jim Martin]

Sa.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

On the next episode of Hark. We're ascending to the heavens It's Seraphim the Isaiah sees and they're flying around.

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

Because they have three sets of wings.

[Kate Massey]

And they are crying to each other the Sanctus the holy, holy, holy.

[Maggie Van Dorn]

And we're stretching our lungs to sing one of the most iconic Glorias of all time. Excuse me.

[Malvern Carville / Ricardo da Silva]

One syllable.

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

How many notes?

[Percy Jackson / Rachel Maughan / Kevin Christopher Roblez / James Bilodeau]

16.

[Kate Massey]

16?

[Richard Cook / Will Gualtieri]

Yes, 16 notes.