A lesson in communication
Sir: Your correspondents (Letters, 16 and 23 May) have successfully, I hope, enlightened Mr Ludovic Kennedy on communication. But one of them, Canon Blair (16 May), in an other- wise unanswerable letter, raises a different mat- ter altogether.
He states that 'Where the congregation joins in, the service is not boring. Where, as in a cathe- dral . . . the congregation does not or cannot, it is bound to be tedious.' This is a matter of opinion, and coming from the Chancellor of a cathedral is almost 'heresy.'
One of the roles of a cathedral is to provide such vicarious worship. In the twentieth cen- tury a cathedral has many other roles, inchul- ing.provision for congregation participation, but it is sad to find that your correspondent seems to have little time for those whose expression of worship is greatest when they are not ac- tively participating.
As the organist of St Paul's wrote recently: . . singing or saying out loud is not the only form of taking part in a service. When I partici- pate in a conversation I do not (or try not) talk all the time; I also listen. To be fully active on a journey from Manchester to London I do not feel obliged to drive the train.'
• I hope that I have misread Canon Blair and that 'trying to put things right' does not include the jettisoning of those services where (to quote Christopher Dearnley again) 'music is an in- tegral part of the activity of prayer.'
Stanley Clarke Precentor, St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
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