Funeral Music

At the start of a presentation recently I asked people if they had thought about the music they'd like at their funeral: I don't want to know what you've chosen, I said, just whether you've considered the question.

Most people had, and I'm wondering what that's about.  It's not as though they expect to be consciously present at the occasion, making sure all their wishes are carried out.  But they care about being remembered, and that means associating their memory with a particular piece of music. My current choice would be Baker Street, a song I would kill to have written and have sometimes covered in public.  The lyric hints at a story but leaves you to piece it together yourself; it ends with the promise of a new morning when "you're going home" - very apt for a funeral, doncha think? And spines were just made to tingle to that saxophone.  All together now: drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr wam pom pa pa pah!

For my dad, it's going to be Karg-Elert's rhapsody on the hymn tune "Nun Danket", to which "Now thank we all our God" is sung.  If it sounds obscure, that may be because you don't know your organ repertoire; but Dad of course does, or did, and this was a piece I remember hearing him play when I was quite little.  It's triumphant and loud, one for pulling out all the stops.  Many people will recognise it without being able to put a title to it.  While not technically difficult (Dad was competent but never a virtuoso) it's rewarding and very much one to end a recital with, an encore, follow that.  I doubt he could play it now, although you find with some musicians with dementia that they retain their instrumental skills even when other functions have withered away.  The point is this: I want him to be remembered as the musician, and therefore the man, he was at his best.  He's got some grim times to come, but they need to be seen in the context of a long life in which he's made a lot of music and enabled other people to make a lot more.