Arthur Bliss thought Bliss's music competent but unremarkable. In 1961, Bliss and Hassall collaborated on a cantata, "The Beatitudes", commissioned for the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral. Reviews were friendly, but the work has rarely been performed since, and has been eclipsed by another choral work written for Coventry at the same time, Britten's "War Requiem". Bliss followed this with two further large-scale choral works, "Mary of Magdala" (1962) and "The Golden Cantata" (1963). Throughout his life, Bliss was vigilant on the state of music in Britain, about which he had written extensively since the 1920s. In 1969 he publicly censured
Coventry Coventry Coventry ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. Historically part of Warwickshire, Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham. Coventry is east-southeast of Birmingham, southwest of Leicester, north of Warwick and northwest of London. Coventry is also the most central city in England, being only 11 miles (18 km) south-southwest of the country's geographical centre in Leicestershire. The current Coventry Cathedral was built after the majority of the 14th century cathedral