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
Thomas Coventry, 1st Earl of Coventry Thomas Coventry, 1st Earl of Coventry Thomas Coventry, 1st Earl of Coventry ("ca." 162915 July 1699), known as the Hon. Thomas Coventry from 1640 to 1687 and as the Lord Coventry from 1687 to 1697, was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1660 and 1687 when he succeeded to the peerage.. Coventry was the younger son of Thomas Coventry, 2nd Baron Coventry, and his wife Mary (née Craven). Thomas Coventry, 1st Baron Coventry, was his grandfather. In April 1660, he was elected Member of Parliament for Droitwich in the Convention Parliament. He