Biography
David Rice is studying for an MM in organ at Yale Institute of Sacred Music. In 2024-2025, he was acting assistant director of music at Coventry Cathedral. He holds a BA in music from Cambridge, UK, and MA in choral conducting from Birmingham, UK. He has served as a high school music teacher and as director of music at two British churches.
Paper Abstract
Coventry Cathedral was destroyed by German bombing in 1940; the surviving stonework now stands as a monument to our shared responsibility for harm caused through conflict. A dramatic façade connects the new Cathedral, consecrated in 1962, at right angles to the ruined nave. The aims for this building, set out in a competition for designs in 1951, include ‘enshrining the experience of resurrection’. From the shortlist, only Basil Spence’s successful entry kept the ruins in their entirety: roots were his priority, and form a living part of the building’s function today.
The ruins play an active role in the civic life of the city through tourism, commemorations, and festivals. Some of the Cathedral’s most moving liturgies make use of this outdoor space to remind us that resurrection, with its implications of destruction, is the fundamental story of Christian faith. Salvaged metal nails formed into crosses are sent around the world and displayed by partner churches as a reminder of Coventry’s reconciliation mission.
Beneath our feet in a place of worship, we feel the sustaining and nourishing power of a building and its community. Can an empty shell of a building carry the same effect? This paper explores the functional, spiritual and architectural links between Coventry’s ruins and the new Cathedral. As we engage with the conflicts and destructions of the twenty-first century, we will be increasingly interested in whether Coventry’s rootedness in its own destruction can be a model for other reconstructions and resurrections.