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 Cathedral The foundation stone, the ten stone panels inset into the walls of the cathedral called the "Tablets of the Word", and the baptismal font were designed and carved by the émigré German letter carver Ralph Beyer. As the cathedral was built on the site of a Benedictine monastery, there has always been a gentle Benedictine influence on the cathedral community. A number of the cathedral staff become third order (lay) Benedictines and there are often cathedral retreats to Burford Priory. Since the opening of the new cathedral in 1962 there has been a gentle evangelical emphasis. This has been strengthened