Age and seniority in the musical world were not much help to Sir Arthur Bliss when it came to the premiere of his major work, The Beatitudes. One of a number of commissions for a festival celebrating the opening of the new Coventry cathedral in 1961, this large-scale meditation on the nine beatitudes of Jesus was meant to be performed in the cathedral on the day of its consecration. One of the other commissions, however, was Britten’s War Requiem. This subsequently more famous work by the younger composer proved to be so challenging that Bliss’s performance had to be moved to the comparatively cramped confines of a local theatre and was not actually performed in its intended venue until 2012. As Master of the Queen’s Music, Bliss could have felt slighted, but apparently bore no ill will towards Britten.