Summary
Performed as part of the mystery plays, the 'Coventry Carol' is from the Pageant of the Shearman and Taylors and tells the story of the Slaughter of The Innocents.
A copy of the manuscript survived a fire in Birmingham Library in 1879 by sheer chance. Musician Ian Pittaway describes seeing the play in the ruins of Coventry cathedral in the 1980s - the drama was so powerful it still moves him to tears.
The carol was sung on Christmas Day in 1940 in a live broadcast to the Empire just six weeks after the bombing of Coventry that destroyed the city's cathedral.
Journalist Donna Marmestein tells of how the carol transformed how she felt about loss in her family.
Composer and performer Tori Amos describes what inspired her cover version of the song. Amy Hanson from the Small Steps Charity talks about how much her mother loved the carol. The children from the school her charity supports in Kenya sing their version of the song.
Roxanne Burroughs explains about how her daughter Kaitlyn came to have the carol sung at her funeral.
The soloist is Samantha Lewis; early music is from The Night Watch; Reading Phoenix choir and Southern Voices sing the carol and the children's choir is from the Rehabilitation centre Immanuel Afrika in Nairobi, Kenya.
Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Sara Conkey
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day 2019.
Transcript
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| 0:40.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:48.3 | The night of November the 14th, 1914, was clear. in fact, it was moonlit, so much so that |
| 0:57.0 | the Germans called the Operation Moonlight. And about seven o'clock in the evening, the |
| 1:03.0 | plane started coming overhead. |
| 1:06.0 | You could hear the bombs coming down, and my father and mother were crying at this point |
| 1:13.6 | and praying, praying a lot. |
| 1:16.6 | And so that went on hour after hour, just bang, bum, |
| 1:21.6 | wuphuph up the street, and rubble was flying all over there you know running near the shelter |
| 1:35.3 | it's said that throughout the night the bells kept going which is why people thought perhaps the cathedral had been spared and then in the morning of course discovered that it certainly hadn't been |
| 1:39.3 | I'm David Stone the presenter as sub-deen of Coventry Cathedral. |
| 1:47.0 | One of the things that's really extraordinary to me is that just weeks after the bombing, |
| 1:56.0 | Provost Dick Howard was able to make a Christmas Day message, a broadcast to the Empire, as it was then. |
| 2:03.6 | I am speaking from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. |
... |
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