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Two funerals and a christening

Possibly not such a catchy title as Mr Curtis’ Four Weddings… but the content may be similarly sweary in places. Sorry.

One of several recent local church venues – Christ Church, Esher

I currently appear to be in the singing phase of my life. Sadly, I also find myself in the early stages of the funeral phase. I’m leaning in, perhaps too much at times, to the former and trying to reconcile myself to the latter.

These two worlds collide from time to time. In August, I was part of a sub-group of  Twickenham Choral requested to provide a musical interlude at the funeral of a choir-member’s husband. This involved refreshing my memory of a rather lovely section from Brahms’ German Reqiuem and a quick run-through on the day at a church on Twickenham Green with our former Conductor.  I also taught myself the Tenor part for the three hymns, so as to be able to add depth and tenorial welly. We gave a pretty decent performance as part of what turned out to be an appropriately moving, but also entertaining, service for a man who had clearly not spent his whole life just sitting on the sofa. I had never met him, and only know his widow by sight at choir, but the various eulogies and stories brought him to ‘life’ brilliantly (not literally – oh, sorry) and the whole event passed off more than satisfactorily – if such an impersonal description is permitted for such an emotionally charged event.

Sadly, I DID know the man in the coffin at last Friday’s funeral in Barnes. Here, I was merely a member of the congregation, there being no choir for this one. Nevertheless, I determined to give the hymns my all, lurching between the soprano line and the bass depending how the mood took me. I find that focusing on the singing can detract from the potential for weeping – especially when I am not part of the core family and friends contingent and might feel vaguely fraudulent if convulsed in copious tears. (As the title of this blog will remind you, I do have a tendency to weep from one eye anyway, so I am well-practised at surreptitious cheek-wiping.) On this occasion, there was little overt wailing or sobbing – if anyone indulged, it would have been at the private committal afterwards – and the music for departure was the jaunty theme tune to University Challenge, as a nod to Richard’s participation in said event alongside Stanley Johnson in the early nineteen sixties (where he apparently exclaimed ‘f***’ on air – I didn’t meet him until the mid-eighties, but this story has never surprised me).

The late Mr du P in his TV glory days

The congregation then mostly repaired to a nearby hostelry for the wake which, as the departed was a long-standing rowing club member, was loud, merry, convivial and ultimately exactly what he would have wanted. No more singing was required – at least not by the time I left to stagger to the train station.

And so to the third event, and yet another unfamiliar local church, this time in Esher. Not a funeral this time, hurrah! And this one has a bit of a story. Sometimes these things write themselves. Here goes.

July – I am asked will I help boost the local church choir in the autumn for the Christening of H’s first grandchild. I am, of course, only too pleased to help. I put it in my diary and think no more of it until early September, by which time H is otherwise occupied with sad and traumatic family problems and I rather think there will be a postponement.

Mid-September – a fellow singer confirms that the christening is not postponed, and points out that we have been sent the anthem on WhatsApp. I print it, colour in my Tenor line, practice a bit along with good old Spotify, and decide it is a rather lovely piece and perfectly learnable. I learn it, mostly. It has a couple of rather showy tenor moments – I will enjoy this.

Friday – on returning from the Barnes funeral I receive a reply to my request for details of the hymns for the Christening (so I can take an advance peak at the tenor line – I know, I am a dreadful swot), enclosing three hymn titles and a whole psalm setting! Two of the three hymns are not in either of my thick old hymnals and the psalm setting is by H’s former husband and not on Spotify. Sigh. She has at least sent me the manuscript, so I’m straight up to the printer.

Saturday – the anthem is still lovely and is almost learned. The hymn I can find in my hymn book is fine. I write out the tenor part with each set of words for the three verses which will make it easier than using a hymn book. The other two hymns I ignore. I can’t practise them if I don’t know how they go, and there will be a congregation singing anyway. I decide they are not important. The psalm – number 23 – has me at the piano checking the notes as I warble my way through a bit of sight-singing. Not too hard, I think. I mark up the tricky bits in code so I will remember what NOT to do (possibly) – and in fact I sing it through before I go to bed and miraculously wake up with most of it in my head in the morning. All will be fine. I will not disgrace myself as a boost to their Tenor line.

Sunday – for some reason I get up at 6.15am. It is still dark. I am mad. I miscalculated last night and am an hour earlier than I really need for waking, caffeinating, practising and driving to Esher.

Normal morning o’clock on Sunday. I arrive at the church in Esher and meet with the two ‘extra’ members of the choir who are ‘boosting’ today. Only two? A bass and an alto. Ah well, I joke, I’m sure there will be at least a couple of tenors in the choir.

We are kitted out in cassocks. I am ridiculously excited because both my offspring wore cassocks when they were choristers and this is another box I can now tick on the life-experiences list, even if the sleeves (are they sleeves?) hang down to my knees and the hooks and eyes up the front are almost impossibly fiddly.

Aww – offspring in the brief period when they were both choristers

Someone hands out copies of the order of service and printed copies of the hymns. The ‘missing’ hymns are, in fact, familiar to me and I will be able to sing the tune at least.

Someone else hands out copies of the Gloria – oh yes, we need to sing a setting of the mass. Hahahahhaa I think. Will have to mime that and let the resident tenors take the strain. I wonder when they will arrive?

I instal myself next to the basses and smile to myself at being in the back row of  church choir stalls. Having been refused entry to my childhood church choir (on the grounds I was a girl) I can finally stick two fingers up to the authorities. They even let us into the lower voices now – nah-nah-na-nah-nah!

The choir-master arrives and tells me the tenors should be on the other side. I look across and see no men at all on that side, but gamely traipse across in my oversized cassock, with my handbag, cardigan, music, order of service, psalm, hymn-sheets etc. Presumably the tenors are all female here – well, that’s excellent.

Be-cassocked! And very serious.

Hmm. The ladies in the back row are sopranos. As are the ladies in the front row.

Rehearsal begins. The awful reality dawns. I am the ONLY TENOR. F***itty f***! I can’t do this! I’ve never sung a standard church service before. I can’t cope with all these bits of paper. I’ll either not be heard, or forget where I am and sing the wrong bit, or, or, or…

Get a grip! There is, at this point, no choice but to plough on. I am already thinking that the redeeming feature will be a blog-post. Some consolation.

In fact, having acquitted myself reasonably in the psalm rehearsal, we begin the anthem and my heart is beating so hard that I can hear it in the notes I’m producing. This is awful. But I must press on. In several places the tenors (the TENOR singular!) have an exposed and important moving note when the rest of the choir are sustaining. I’m sure I sound like a strangulated seal – or worse, a strangulated seal whose heart is beating out of its chest. Two-thirds of the way through, a young man arrives and my relief must be palpable as he sits himself beside me. And proceeds to join in on completely different notes, right through to the end. We go over a tricky part again, and once again, he is not singing what I am singing, or indeed anything very tuneful at all. 

In the brief time between rehearsal and service, I introduce myself to this young man and we bemoan the lack of time to sing together in preparation. I gently ask if he is aware he was singing a third down from what I was singing (my guess). He agrees – and I feel this will surely resolve itself. It’s always difficult to pick up part way through a rehearsal.

We manage two of the hymns, the psalm (where the young man sings at least half of the notes, not unpleasantly) and the Gloria etc tolerably well as this seems to be required only in unison and we can both do that admirably.

At this point, I am so thankful for being a swot and for having actually learned most of this music in advance, that I end up taking communion. I’m a teeny bit ashamed, as I follow the sopranos towards the vicar, that I may have made this choice because a slug of red wine might aid my tired vocal chords (not that I drink! see previous blogpost!) and perhaps calm me sufficiently for the successful completion of those glorious tenor notes in the anthem to come, but decide that no, it is because I am swept up by the religious occasion –  and also it’s easier to do what the others around me are doing. I am then only slightly disappointed that in these post-Covid days apparently they don’t offer the wine to be drunk from the chalice, but simply dunk each Communion wafer into the wine before handing it over. Who knew? Not so good for the old vocal chords after all.

And then to the anthem. I promise you,  I try to get the young man to sing the same notes as me. I turn and sing at him several times in the first verse, but I need to face towards the congregation or they will simply hear his ‘wrong’ notes or nothing at all. All to no avail. I resolve instead to do my damnedest to out-sing him and hit all the notes perfectly – and loudly – myself. I have no idea if this will be acceptable. I have little alternative. The conductor does not appear to be scowling at me. We reach the end and the tenors have the final say – we both move to an F sharp* to resolve the final chord at approximately the same time and roughly when the conductor probably hoped, and eliciting a gentle acknowledging smile from him as we all wait to be seated for the prayers. 

I sit. ‘F*** me!’ I hope I do not say audibly. And immediately am again ashamed to even think such a thing with remnants of holy wafer – and (tiny) traces of holy wine – in my unholy gob.

The final hymn. I belt out the tenor part I learned and enjoy the harmonies. In the final verse, we are all to sing the tune whilst the sopranos embark on a tricky descant. In a fit of madness, I decide to sing ‘up’ in women’s voice territory – and boy, do I belt it out! The relief that this is the last musical item is so great that I reach the giddy heights of a soprano top E not once, but twice – thus boosting my friends the altos who are doing a fabulous job as it is, and almost certainly do not need a boost of any sort from anyone, least of all a demented tenor-lady.

I mingle with friends and the christening party. We all agree the baby is an absolute star – she looks properly cute in an old-fashioned and not Instagrammy way, she is wearing what looks like a family christening gown, she slept right up until the main font action and then smiled and gurgled happily for the rest of the proceedings. 

And then back to the car where I change out of my heels, laugh myself silly for a short spell, spend five minutes trying to unlock the crook-lock which I have apparently affixed incorrectly in my panic before the service (not laughing now are you, you silly woman!), and drive home to bore Mr J with the morning’s antics before disappearing upstairs to start practising the next set of rather different musical challenges for a performance later this week.

And Mr J retreats, wisely, to the garden.

*The young man came and thanked me afterwards for helping him along, which was nice. “We got that F sharp,” he proudly said. I am equally proud to say that I smiled sweetly, nodded and wished him a good day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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