Sadly two supporters of the music at our church died recently and were commemorated with appropriately musical services.
Dawn, a gifted pianist who had given up playing professionally when she married, had lived in Doynton and her well-attended memorial service was held at the village church there. She had left lengthy and detailed instructions for it, and the service planners did their best to accommodate her wishes. The choir sang Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you and Brahms’ How lovely are Thy dwellings – rather strenuous when you are the only soprano!
A week later was the funeral of Jane Fletcher back in Bath. I’m giving her surname as we sang together in the Chantry Singers at a time when it seemed as if half the sopranos were called Jane, and I wouldn’t want readers to worry that it was one of the other Janes. She was a familiar face to music lovers in Bath as for many years she stewarded at the Festivals, and once gave me a spare ticket to a concert in the Roman Baths. I don’t think she’d left any specific instructions so she got the Rutter again.