Old Cambridge High Street originally had four names: St. John's Street, Sanyi Street, King's Avenue and Trenpington Street. It begins at Tudor Gate House in the north and ends at Fitzwilliam Museum in the south. The magnificent chapel of King's College is located in the middle. The core of this street is King's Avenue, a real avenue of the Wangs, at least in the non-tourist season. Crowding is inevitable at ordinary times. This is the picturesque downtown. Parliament Hall, St Mary's Cathedral, King's College Chapel-in this architectural community, classical and medieval styles are mixed. However, without the big tree in King's College Chapel, the building would be so splendid and desolate.

Those houses built of bricks and trusses were built in18th century and19th century. Shops, coffee shops, houses-there is not a famous house on King's Avenue, but all these add up to provide a vivid background for the opposite college. Newspapers, teddy bears and robes can be bought at King's Avenue, ties of various colors can be bought at Reid and Amice Company, and the best handicrafts can be bought at Primavera Gallery. Once upon a time, people met at least once a day on King's Avenue, which was a place for news exchange between colleges and universities and a place for formulating university policies. "Please keep this in mind," Francis Cornford wrote in 1908 in his Microscopy of University Education. "People who do things are people who stroll on King's Road from 2 to 4 every day." Tear down several small towers at both ends of King's College Chapel, and its proportion will be more appropriate!

—john ruskin, 1849.

A stone wall extends along King's Road, and the beautiful steeple divides it into several sections, as if Kublai Khan's palace is behind the wall. Through the lattice window, the inner courtyard is covered with green grass. Even the Victorian mailbox outside the guard room has a small dome. The wall next to the bike says "No Bikes". Swallows ignore the daily flood of tourists and nest in the arch. This is the classical porch of King's College. Of course, tourists go to the north gate of the chapel instead. Even the back door here is very imposing. John Baetschmann said that King's College is the most similar to Oxford among all Cambridge colleges, and it is unreasonable for him to say so-this is the most flattering evaluation that an Oxford person can give.

The college is called "King's College of Notre Dame Saint Nicholas". It was founded by Henry VI in 144 1 year, a few months later than Eton College. The king, who just turned 19 years old, imitated William Wickham and founded these two colleges. Seventy years ago, Wickham linked the new college in Oxford with a senior preparatory middle school in Winchester.

Until 186 1, King's College only enrolled students from Eton College. The elite also enjoy the privilege of not having to take the usual college exams or be controlled by the authority of official agents. The king endowed the people of King's College with a special status, which lasted until the middle of19th century. This did not make them more likable, but enhanced the charm of their fake gentlemen.

Nowadays, King's College always emphasizes its liberal tradition of not believing in the Anglican Church. 1973 began to accept girls, which is one of the earliest colleges in Cambridge to accept girls. Today, it is this former Eton College enclave that has the highest proportion of students in public schools (about 80%).

King's College also accepted ethnic minority students earlier and more than other colleges. Teachers are as important as students, which is the custom of King's College. This spirit of freedom and friendship is also the characteristic of the Apostolic Club and Bloomsbury Club. No one can describe it more thoroughly than the novelist Foster, who is an academician of King's College. He said that he would rather betray his country than his friends. If you say this at the beginning of college, it will kill him.

According to the articles of association, King's College should recruit 70 academicians and students, 65,438+00 priests, 6 laymen, 65,438+06 choir boys and a dean. The name of the dean is not the master, but the dean. At that time, it was the largest college in Cambridge, and land was needed to create such a large college. The whole city was demolished, including its parish church-all at once, and the planned new building was not completed until centuries later. At first, only the old courtyard in the north of the chapel was built, which was also the later school. With the fall of King China in wars of the roses, he had no money to finish his college studies.

15 15 years, the chapel was miraculously completed. It took King's College more than 200 years to make a big plan again-only part of it was realized: Gibbs Building facing the gate. James Gibbs, the designer of the Parliament Hall, designed this empty long annex, using light-colored Portland stone, which conforms to the rational spirit of classical architectural art (1724~ 1732). Above the bottom of the stone wall is the piano room, with straight and stable eaves and railings on the top floor-in sharp contrast to the extremely flexible and towering Gothic style of the adjacent chapel. Only the Arc de Triomphe channel, triangular lintel and semicircular window bring some tension to the symmetrical facade, and its simplicity is also due to the limited budget.

194610125 October, in this building, two great men had an argument for the first and only time. "Is there any philosophical trouble?" Karl popper asked, he was the speaker invited by the Ethics Club, and ludwig wittgenstein grabbed the fire hook. Did he really do that? This legendary event led to the longest and most bizarre footnote in the history of philosophy. Today, this room is the studio of two academicians of King's College-Emma rothschild, a female economic historian, and Baron martin rees, a royal astronomer.

The compound designed by Gibbs should have two independent annex buildings, not just one. Another century has passed, and today the entrance courtyard of King's College is completed. William wilkins, the greatest academic architect at that time, built the south building and dining hall from 1824 to 1828. There are two minarets on the roof, facing the street in the east, which are the gatehouse and the chanting platform. Gothic spires are built on the protective wall of this wall, as if climbing down from the roof of the chapel. There are large vertical windows on the wall. These windows are light, transparent and low enough to not spoil the view of the college church. In the middle is the gatehouse, a neo-Gothic masterpiece with a dome and steeple. Although the vertical chapel and gate were built more than 300 years ago, they are consistent and harmonious on the whole, which is a great success of the architect. Who will miss the cloister Wilkins wants to build in it?

Until/kloc-0 died in 970, Foster lived in the entrance compound of King's College for the last 20 years. He is a saint of the college, and teachers and students come to visit him. He is no longer a "shy little mouse" written by Virginia Woolf. His novel Morris describes a gay love story that happened in Cambridge. In the film adapted by James Avery, academicians also lined up to the high table in the canteen. When I was sitting there, the cafeteria under the tall neo-Gothic joists was busy, no one was wearing robes, and the tall table was moved away. Hal Dixon, a retired academician who accompanied me, said, "We boast that we are egalitarians." Old acquaintances looked down at us from the dado wall in the canteen. Baron robert walpole, the first British Prime Minister, and his son holas.

Among the colleagues Dr. Hal Dixon met here before, there were Nobel Prize winner and biochemist Frederick Sanger, historian Noel Annan, Marxist Eric hobsbawm or Tony Blair's teacher and sociologist anthony giddens. Here, you can also see a young academician in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt-Andy Martin, a French teacher. He described surfing as roland barthes described daily life. The corridors and conference rooms are covered with portraits of celebrities from King's College, many of whom are from Bloomsbury Circle (there are also small Indian sculptures in the ladies' room). The library of King's College was also designed by Wilkins, with a collection of nearly 6.5438+0.3 million volumes, which is a rare collection for an economist. Keynes had no children. When he died in 1946, he left the first editions of works by Copernicus, Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Voltaire and Milton to his college, which is a precious library in the history of European thought. Keynes collected about 50 versions of Kant's works published in18th century. Reading is as natural as breathing to him.

Keynes has been collecting books since he entered King's College. Behind the library, he painted naked male dancers and grape pickers on the wall of his residence in Weber compound, which was painted by his friends Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Horst Garden is a community next to Academician Garden (1949), and they also make flowers on the ground and floor tiles painted by still life.

The Modern Archives Center of the College Library has collected thousands of letters and photos of broomes Berry artists-from the manuscripts of graduates of King's College, such as roger fry to alan turing, to almost all the manuscripts of Foster and Rupert Brooke. It is not ruled out that saman rashid, a former history student, will one day hand over the printed version of his novels to this archive, and now the painting door of Keynes's residence next to Gordon Square in London has even been hung in its reading room. The grassland of college students is Jianhe grassland of King's College, where cows graze. At the beginning of Foster's novel The Longest Journey, several students from King's College made philosophical comments: "The cow is alive ... whether I am in Cambridge, Iceland or dead, the cow will live." We walked into the backyard from the Jianhe Bridge in Wilkins (18 19). A slightly curved bodhi forest vagina takes us across the grass along its beautiful lines. Anemone, hyacinthus orientalis, blue star, narcissus and chessboard flowers can be seen everywhere. On the grass by the river, the first ray of new green is swaying. But what is different is that even if there is no colorful spring, from the back garden, the scenery of King's College has not changed since18th century: Gibbs Building, chapel and the old courtyard of Clare College where they are located keep a green and noble distance. This is the way that boys in the choir of King's College walk every day. They went to the university church from the school across the street to attend evening prayers.

1446 On July 25th, Jacob's Day, King Henry VI laid the foundation stone for the college church. People must think it is more magnificent than what we think today. Only the cathedral and the court chapel have similar glory. This chapel is the mass chapel of the founder of the college, but it is first and foremost a monument of the church, opposing the Wycliffe Sect and other pagans at that time. Seventy years later, the chapel of King's College was finally completed. It is a post-Gothic symbol of Britain, and its influence far exceeds that of Cambridge. This is the last church building of the royal patrons before the reform.

The doorman at King's College called their chapel a "hut". Coleridge praised it as "beauty beyond the senses and intuition", William Turner painted it with a brush, and william wordsworth dedicated three poems to it. Only John Lars, a famous architect from Oxford, complained that the baby in Cambridge looks like an upside-down table with four legs facing the sky. For rock climbers in the 1930s, the biggest challenge was the vertical steep wall of the northeast tower of King's Chapel. Whoever can fix an umbrella or bicycle at the top of a tall tower will have a sense of victory, just like a stonemason standing on a rickety scaffold. There were sometimes more than 200 workers who built the King's Chapel, which was quite a lot for a city with only about 5,000 residents at that time. What kind of building is this? 1446 started construction under the rule of a king of Lancaster, 146 1 stopped construction due to wars of the roses, 1477, the winner of York family continued construction, 1485 stopped construction again, and was finally completed by Tudor family brilliantly. As usual, people first built the East Wall, using gray magnesium limestone from Yorkshire. The second half of the western part of the church uses the dark ivory Wilton stone in North Hampton. Not only from the replacement of stones, but also from the style, we can see that the building has been interrupted. The western part of the buttress is decorated with Tudor roses, hanging doors, vetiver tails and badge animals, which is different from the early eastern part. However, despite this difference, despite the long construction time and at least four architects leading the project, the overall effect is unified.

In the static magical belief, this chapel cancels the separation between the load-bearing wall and the window, and John Baetschmann called it the "crystal palace of stone and glass". Truss structure is like a spider web, which is weakly spread on windows, walls and roofs to form a tall and long room. The wall doesn't bear load, but it seems to bear only a light load. The room is well lit and bright. The semi-cylindrical ribs on both sides protrude outward and branch into a vault above our heads, fanning out almost effortlessly. This fan-shaped vault spans 12 meters, is 88 meters long and 24 meters high, and is uninterrupted in one go. This great engineering achievement combines clear structure with high-grade decoration. It was a bold design to build such a magnificent vault at that time. The crown stone was embedded in the diamond shape with vertical ribs at the fan-shaped folds. The crown stone itself weighed one ton, and the roses and hanging doors were carved on a huge stone as alternate Tudor badges. The whole vault weighs 1.875 tons, and the overall weight is guided outward, which is shared by 4 turret buildings and 22 buttresses. A row of through side halls covered the depth of the thick crib, and the spire of the crib stood on the roof like a spear and went straight into the sky.

Thanks to the help of an academician from King's College, I was able to enter the fan-shaped vault of the chapel. A spiral staircase in the northwest tower connects a narrow passage along the side wall, which supports a huge oak roof beam. Near the beam is a dark room, and its undulating ground is the back of the fan-shaped vault. Between the oak ribs and the stone roof, I feel like Jonah trapped in the belly of a whale. This arched miracle has a name: John West. There is evidence that he has lived in the construction shed of King's Chapel since 1485. The fan-shaped vault of the central tower of Canterbury Cathedral and the retro altar of Petersburg Cathedral are considered as his works. His masterpiece is in Cambridge. Reginald Erie, an architect in Henry VI, originally designed a branch dome. John Wastel completed the chapel with this huge fan-shaped vault from 15 12 to 15 15, which is also the largest fan-shaped vault in Britain. Vastl and his stonemason Thomas stockton also built most vaults in the wing, gates with many statues, turrets and sculptors' exquisite badges-nearly 400 stone badges: roses, crowns, hanging doors and flowers, Mrs. beaufort's greyhound and Tudor Welsh dragons. Henry VI would never agree to this decoration. His whole chapel should be as simple as the East. However, Henry VIII turned the front hall into a treasure house of his own badges: the grand hall of the national church and the hall of honor of the Tudor family. As a new dynasty, its rule is not stable, and it needs to show off its badge more. The forced use of badges in buildings is a typical Spanish feature, so David Watkin, an art historian, thinks that "it may be the result of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon 1509."

The magnificent black oak altar cabinet is a gift from the king, which separates the front hall from the altar. Just cut off the extra-long room, which enhanced the attraction. The entrance of the lectern is like the Arc de Triomphe in Rome, with an organ on it (1late 7th century). Two angels stood on its horizontal feet and played the flashing trombone-what a clever arrangement! The contrast of styles is also unusual: in the middle of Gothic architecture are Renaissance-style woodcarving art, altar cabinets and altar chairs. Carved columns, pilasters, floor tiles, circular arches and classical shapes separate many almost artificial statues and patterns. In the early Renaissance style, its quality is unique in Britain. Are those wood carvings from Italy, France or Holland? We don't know their names. But they left the royal abbreviations HR and RA. Henry VIII married his second wife, anne boleyn, in 1533, and she was beheaded in 1536, which is a useful basis for determining the date of making the altar cabinet.

Unlike wood carving, the contract for making the windows of the chapel was retained, and the name of the artist was written on the contract. Bernard Flower, the glass assembler of the Wangs, painted the glass paintings of the King's Chapel from 15 15 to 1547. This is the most complete set of church windows in the era of Henry VIII. During World War II, they were dismantled and stored in pieces, and it took five years to reinstall them. Stylistically, these glass paintings reflect the transition from Gothic to Renaissance. From the iconology point of view, they also completely follow the medieval tradition. The upper part of the 24 portholes tells the story in the Old Testament, and the lower part depicts the plot in the New Testament. The doomsday judgment map of West Window echoes the big window with the plot of Christ's crucifixion and Jesus' crucifixion. Everything is very touching and valuable in art history. A painting in a wing really touched me: passion of the christ, created by craigie Acheson 1994, is the most primitive code of eternal loneliness, submerged in the passion of color. A window cleaner engraved his personal message on the glass in the front hall of the church: "yohan blake Moore cleaned these windows at 1747." Later, another sentence was engraved: "They want to clean again."

It is precisely the huge works of Rubens that the audience likes in the chapel of King's College, which has aroused strong protests from experts. This painting was painted for a buddhist nun in Flanders in 1634, and was later acquired by the Earl of Westminster. The auction price of 3 million marks in 1959 broke the record at that time, and its new owner donated it to the college. These "worship" methods are already very good. However, because the painting was too big to fit in the east window, academicians asked people to dismantle the historic main altar and dado. Since then, just above the holy family, this masterpiece of baroque painting has launched a bold struggle with Tudor glass painting. But we must be fair: what happened at the other end of the church was a major aesthetic disaster-the souvenir shop in the front hall of the church.

Undoubtedly, King's College Chapel needs money, and the daily expenses alone amount to more than 1500 euros. Acid rain and automobile exhaust are more and more damaging to the wall. With the continuous aging of the climate, maintenance problems and maintenance costs are also increasing. A few years ago, at that time, free visits were allowed, and donations were placed in an oak box wrapped in iron by the gate (now displayed in the exhibition room of the wing chapel). It is said that in order to build the college chapel, henry vii donated money to Cambridge with this box. People there have long used a unique source of income-the choir boy's golden voice. The choir of King's College is older than this church. In the year when the college was founded, that is, 144 1 year, Henry VI stipulated that six ordinary Christians and 16 "elegant and modest" boys should sing mass in the chapel of King's College every day. They have been doing this for more than 550 years. 16 Boys wearing Eton uniforms, top hats and tuxedos will come to evening prayers at 5: 30. King's College School, No.50 Granger Road, is a mixed preparatory school, enrolling children aged 4~ 13. There, in addition to singing, they also learn the traditional morality of self-restraint, loyalty and perseverance.

Women have long been priests of the Anglican Church. But what if there are girls in the choir of King's College? I can't imagine. No soprano can do this trembling boy voice, which is between an angel and a eunuch and cannot be imitated. Ascending to the fan-shaped vault of King's College is a crystal-transparent highest tone, a voice magician, who plays to the extreme before the sound change is about to happen. Looking at the angel boy sitting in the choir chair, under the light of smokeless Swedish candles, all this fascinated us. Darwin said in his memoirs that when he was in college, he often went to the king's chapel to attend evening prayers. He was moved in the room of nature. "Sometimes choir boys are invited to sing in my room."

Since the Middle Ages, English churches and colleges began to train boys to sing, and their voices were compiled into polyphonic works by church composers, especially in Tudor times, which is a unique vocal music culture in Britain and is still full of vitality. The sound of King's College made the perfect music formed at that time reach an extraordinary level. There will always be a place in the chapel at the end of each semester, but once a year it will be very crowded. The night before, people with sleeping bags will be seen waiting in line outside the college gate. The Christmas Eve concert at King's College has an audience of 65.438+0.90 billion, not including the lucky audience of 654.38+0.500 in the chapel. Thanks to the BBC, since 1928, when a crisp solo sings those famous poems, the whole world can watch the live broadcast. For the British, the "hymn of King's College" is an essential part of Christmas celebrations, just as Turkey is in the United States.

Choir Boys in Henry VI is a kind of national export material, which is managed and put on the market by brokers like other boys' groups in the rock industry. They go out for concerts on weekends, tour abroad in summer and release three new CDs every year. In secular society, this kind of church music is becoming more and more popular. Important musicians emerged in this college and its choir: Orlando Gibbons, 13 years old, sang here; Conductor john eliot gardiner; Thomas Aitz, the composer who is currently the manager of the Aldeburg Music Festival, and tenors such as David Caudiere and Lawrence Zazo.