Organists sometimes complain about the music chosen for funerals. Mostly it’s a question of suitability: too frivolous, too loud, too corny etc; not in keeping with the solemnity and seriousness of the occasion. But I was faced with a somewhat different problem today as “duty organist”. It wasn’t so much the playing of “popular” music on CD for the processions in and out. It was the choice of hymns, or at least one of them. It was Jerusalem: William Blake’s poem set to a magnificent tune by Hubert Parry. What’s wrong with that? I hear you asking: it’s played at the Last Night of the Proms. What is wrong with it is that it’s quite difficult to play, even on a grand, century-old 3-manual instrument like ours!
When amateurs like me volunteer to play in public (and a church funeral is indeed public; there must have been three hundred mourners in the pews today), there is an unwritten understanding with the minister or church management or the funeral director about what is playable and what is not. If I were drawing up a job description for a new duty organist, it would include ‘playing any hymn in our Methodist hymnbook competently and at a decent tempo given a few days notice in which to practice’, perhaps equivalent to a merit at Grade 7 or distinction at Grade 6.
I reckon that Jerusalem is more difficult than that. I once attempted it at a church more than a thousand miles from here and made a mess of it. I resolved then never to play it again so I didn’t even have a copy when the order of service arrived, days after I’d agreed to play. I could have asked to be excused duty. I could have asked the minister to get the family to choose something else. I could have got a CD for the congregation to sing to, karaoke-style. What I couldn’t have done was play it on the piano: that’s even more difficult! But I could learn it, and that’s what I did, having borrowed a copy from a senior organist colleague.
It took hours of practice; it almost took blood, sweat and tears. And I had to leave undone those other things that I ought to have done. Sometimes in this situation you play quietly so that no-one notices the mistakes. You can’t do that with Jerusalem with its prominent introduction, interlude and postlude: it has to be played with all the stops out: fortissimo albeit molto lento. So that’s what I did, and verily the church workers in the office beneath shook with the sound thereof.
I expect I’ll be accused of exaggerating the difficulty, but on my performance today I think I might just have scraped a pass at Organ Grade 8. I do hope the family and the congregation were content. I will do some more practice on it, but don’t let that encourage anyone to choose Jerusalem for their funeral, please.
