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Singers from St. Alban’s Episcopal in Annandale and a Kelley family friend from Delaware joined Holy Comforter’s choir, under the leadership of Jack Warren Burnam, a friend and mentor of David’s who took over musical direction of the choir during its Lincoln pilgrimage last summer. David’s friend Jason West was at the organ and provided a descant he composed as well as special musical settings for organ and french horn.
For this newsletter, David shared how pieces he and his sons chose for Kathleen’s funeral honored her and offered solace in the face of profound loss.
Francois Couperin, “The Mysterious Barricades” (prelude)
“During the many years that we were married, Kathleen heard no end of me practicing or composing or doing all kinds of things at the piano. She was possibly a fan of mine as a musician, but it wasn’t the basis of our relationship, so she didn’t talk to me about it. One day I was practicing this Couperin piece, and she told me that she really liked it, which was very unusual. I asked Tom MacCracken to play it because he is an expert in early music, and a true friend, and I thought she would have liked it.”
Antonin Dvorak, Largo from Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” (prelude)
“A few weeks before Kathleen died, my friend Jason told me about how he had arranged the slow movement of the Dvorak New World symphony for French horn and organ. Kathleen was a French horn player for most of her life. She and I were in band together in high school. In one of those concerts, we played the final movement of the New World Symphony, arranged for band. So the New World Symphony sort of became ‘our song.’ She made a mixtape for me when we were in college, and one of the pieces was the finale from the New World Symphony. When she died, I asked Jason if his arrangement could be part of the funeral.”
Hymn 657, “Love divine, all loves excelling” (sequence hymn)
“This is a hymn that I talked to Kathleen about. I had seen a video on Facebook that someone had taken on their phone at the Association of Anglican Musicians conference. For some reason at last summer’s banquet, they broke out into that hymn. Only at an AAM convention will you have a spontaneous rendition of all three verses of a hymn, unaccompanied, from memory, in four-part harmony, with an improvised descant!
“I remember thinking that line, ‘Changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place,’ is just really wonderful, and I talked to Kathleen about it and told her she could have this hymn at my funeral. Then I asked her if she wanted to talk about funerals, and she said no…we didn’t get to talk about funerals, but I did tell her that that line meant a lot to me.
“It's about the promise that we have, related to the line in one of the prayers for the departed in the Book of Common Prayer, how when we die we ‘go from strength to strength.’ You have this life, and you glorify God, and your life is a testament to the glory of God, and when you die, you go to the next strength, the next glory, and you continue to glorify God. I think that’s beautiful.”
Thomas Matthews, “The Lord is my Shepherd” (anthem at the offertory)
“We thought that the 23rd Psalm text was good, John, Drew and I, and we knew that the choir knew that particular setting. It was my friend Jason’s idea to transcribe some of the organ’s solo bits for the horn player, which was a really beautiful idea.”
David Kelley, “Rise up, my love, my fair one” (during communion)
“This piece was commissioned not long after I started at Holy Comforter. At the time, it just poured right out of me. I love the end because it doesn’t end on the tonic chord of E major like it should, it ends on the subdominant chord of A major, which makes it sound a little bit inconclusive. I think the piece is an invitation because of the text, to ‘come away,’ and I feel the end of the piece being incomplete suggests that invitation: where are we going next? You don’t get to see that in the music, you don’t get to hear resolution, because that actually happens after the piece is over. The text is a romantic text; it gets used at weddings, but it also gets used at funerals. ‘Rise up, my love’ is sometimes interpreted as Jesus inviting the deceased, waking the dead. Jesus loves us and asks us to come away. It's less of the romantic interpretation and more the theological one.”
Methodist hymn, “My Hope is Built” (recessional hymn)
“Kathleen grew up in the Methodist Church and has a Methodist Hymnal from that time with her name engraved on the front. When we were dating and newly married, she would sing little songs, humming to herself around the house, which I always loved. She did this all along, but early on, she would hum that particular tune. I asked her about it, and it was that hymn, that tune.
“I asked her about this again a couple of months ago, and she said she didn’t really remember any of that. But I remember her singing it around the house. I like the tune and I like the words. It has ‘when he shall come with trumpet sound’ in the last verse – that’s about the second coming, the waking of the dead. I thought it was nice to go out on that. It’s a sturdy tune, and I think it was meaningful to her, even if she didn’t remember it.”
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