Second performance

Many, many years ago, I went to a national Boy Scout jamboree, where I met a guy from Scotland. We kind of hit it off a bit and had some minor continuing communications over the years. Then, about a decade later when I was up at Oxford, I reconnected with him. Quite unexpectedly since the jamboree, his father, a third son, had acceded to the title of Earl of Lothian (and today my friend, a second son, is now the earl). So, several times, he made me hop on the train and go to to Edinburgh to come visit him and stay at their country manor. His Lordship, being ever the prankster, knew that there were few things in the world I hated more than bagpipe "music," so he arranged that every morning, to wake me up, one of his servants would stand outside my bedroom window playing the bagpipes.

Now, my opinions of the bagpipes have changed little over the years, so you can imagine my chagrin to arrive at the funeral I was playing yesterday to find myself sharing the musical billing with, you guessed it, a bagpiper. The bagpiper in question was actually quite good, from the technical performance stand point and knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, he decided to start piping in the church about half an hour before the service was to start, and with the reverberation of the space, it was making my head throb! Those things have no volume control on them!

Fortunately, we had a brief respite from the cacaphony of the pipes. But, alas, the family had asked him to pipe "Amazing Grace" in the midst of the service, which he obligingly did. And did he do it! I believe he went through every verse of the hymn plus a full verse of introduction and then a full verse reprise at the end!

He was supposed to have played the entire prelude, but he stopped about five minutes beforehand. So, after waiting a bit and determining that he wasn't just taking a brief breather, I grabbed some music to play on the piano, landing upon the middle movement "Andante" of Bach's Concerto in the Italian Style, BMV 971. At the end of the service, I was planning to play the first movement of the concerto for a postlude, but then I saw the piper come back into the nave, and he played and played and played a postlude.....thankfully, we got to leave before he was done!

But, otherwise, I survived the service. This was actually the "second performance" of the funeral for my friend Kevin's grandmother, who I thought we had buried last weekend. Last week we were at the nursing home, and yesterday we were at his aunt's Episcopal church just a few miles away; I've no idea why they had two services in the same neighborhood. I gathered, though, that last week was Kevin's father's service and yesterday was Kevin's aunt's service. Whatever works for the family. They were both at both services and looked civil with one another, so I'm happy they worked out whatever issues they had about the services; I recall in past years seeing some families actually going to court before the funeral to determine who gets to make the funeral and burial arrangements, so it's good this was settled peaceably.

Since we were in a sacred space with a more liturgical service, I wore "choir dress": black cassock, white surplice, and academic hood. I also played altar boy and tended to lighting and later extinguishing the candles, attracting odd looks from the Presbyterians when I genuflected before and after entering the sanctuary space. The MCC minister also vested, wearing an alb and a white stole.

This service was very similar to the one at the nursing home, with me having to play the same two hideous hymns. Kevin's aunt made one addition, though, and added a new third hymn I'd never heard of called "Bye and Bye." I was a little stressed, since I didn't have music for this thing, and I hate having to sightread in front of a congregation! But, they assured me it was in the hymnal at the church. Well, that sounded kind of suspicious to me, since there is no such hymn in the Episcopal hymnal—The Hymnal 1984, that is. It turns out that this parish, which just happens to be located in lily-whitest northwest Washington, actually has Lift Every Voice and Sing II—the African-American hymnal—in the pews. "Bye and Bye" is a traditional Negro spiritual that wasn't hard at all to play. So, we did it. And, you know what? She picked the wrong hymn! LOL! Apparently, she'd wanted some hymn called "Sweet By and By," but she didn't look at the words to this one or listen to the music ahead of time.

The funeral was held at St. Columba's Episcopal Church in the Tenleytown neighborhood. I'd never been there before. It's an older church that's had additions made to it over the years for office and classroom space. And, at some point, they did some very unfortunate architectural modifications to the church itself, pulling the altar and choir out of their proper positions and installing a crossing altar on a wood platform. The organ (an interesting-looking 28-rank tracker) and choir are now in the north transept, the Steinway C I played (and a harpsichord) is in the south transept with overflow seating, and the former chancel and sanctuary are now a bare chapel open to the nave. Alas. Some of those church architectural revisionists need to be drawn and quartered for ruining what was once a very nice liturgical space.