I'm preparing solo music for a funeral.
Twenty-some years ago, I was nearly always preparing music for weddings. Most of the time that was with a quartet, but I still had a binder at the ready to play alone if I had to. I played solo violin or viola for my brothers' weddings, and a few of my cousins'. I don't particularly like playing alone, so those performances were purely out of love.
I got out of wedding music work around the same time we opened the violin store, because the scheduling was impossible. Weddings are most often on Saturdays, and that's our busiest shop day, so it didn't work to do both. I miss playing regularly with a quartet. I don't miss playing weddings.
Now I have a funeral binder. I've reached an age where my peer group may be involved in the weddings of their children, but our parents are dying.
I am grateful music is something I can offer to people I care about. Fresh grief is terrible. You can drift in and out of a kind of shock, and there are decisions to make when you are least interested in making them. But to be able to assure someone I can do the music for a funeral and they don't have to think about that at all feels useful in a way few other things can be at such a time. I'm always honored when people ask.
Music fills a space that relieves people from talking, interacting, or even thinking when they don't want to. People don't need to be rescued from sitting alone and listening to music, because music is company. It alters a space, and curates time.
There is some overlap in the wedding and funeral binders. Often slowing a piece down slightly and playing it more quietly is enough to move it from a celebratory sound to something more contemplative. The theme from Brahm's First Symphony, for instance, works nicely for a unity candle lighting or part of a march, but bring the tempo down a couple of clicks on the metronome and it's pleasant background at a memorial service.
The music I keep on hand for funerals tends to be simpler, primarily because there is not a lot of notice, and therefore less time to prepare. I have arrangements of pieces I used to teach my students, in addition to more advanced repertoire with small cuts over harder spots I might not have time to practice. Each piece has the amount of time it takes marked at the top so I can quickly adapt if I need something longer or shorter. There are places marked to repeat sections if I need to stretch something out.
I try to find a balance of music. There are pieces everyone knows and can name, such as Amazing Grace. There are pieces everyone knows and some can name, like Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring and Ave Maria. There are pieces usually only other musicians can name but sound familiar, including any unaccompanied Bach. And there are also obscure pretty things from the Baroque Era that I barely know what they are as I'm playing them. Those are important because pieces you recognize can catch your attention, and pieces you don't can provide a mental break where you can be comforted without being engaged directly. All the music at a funeral can't be somber, because all of the emotions at a funeral aren't somber. I find things with meaning, and things that are lighter and more animated. I mix all of these things up as feels right in the moment.
Going through any binder of music stirs memories.
There is the pair of Bourrees in the middle of the third Bach Cello Suite that always makes me think of my friend Heather. She's the most confident and dedicated violist I've ever known. We were roommates during a youth chamber guild concert series on Mackinac Island one summer when she showed me these Bourrees she had discovered at college and was enamored with. She liked to play the second one with a mute on, and she said she loved to practice them in a hallway at school that had a great echo.
There are pieces I taught to my students where I still hear my own advice to them in my head as I perform, and try to set a good example as I play.
There are pieces I worked on in college, and I still hear my teacher's advice to me as I play them, and try to do him proud.
There is a movement from a concerto that I got to play with an English teacher I adored who was also a pianist. We played for fun at his home and he agreed to play with me for my jury that semester, and it was one of the only performances in college where I was being judged that I wasn't nervous because I was enjoying myself.
There is Amazing Grace, which always makes me remember my grandfather. I was a teenager when he died and I last played that for him. That was forty years ago, and I remember his open casket, and the standing room only crowd that came to pay their respects. How different am I now compared to that child he knew? Would he even know me if he could somehow see me again? I feel like he would. I could use one of his hugs at any age.
I played Amazing Grace again at my grandmother's funeral. She used to love to hear me practice, even though there are few things more cringe-inducing for a musician. I understand it, because I always liked hearing my own kids practice. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be them. But when you are practicing you need to be free to make mistakes and potentially annoying sounds, and having someone there who actively wants to hear you practice feels akin to having them ask to watch you shower. It's embarrassing. But then, my grandmother used to help bathe me, too, once upon a time. I remember her washing my hair in the bathtub at her house as a child, and hilarity would ensue when their dog, Rusty, would sometimes appear and lick water off the edge of the tub. I miss my grandma every day. I would be thrilled to have her suffer through my practicing now if I could.
Aside from general competence, the biggest differences I've found between students and professionals is dynamics, and the treatment of silence.
When I used to have a teaching studio, I gave my students a handout about how to approach sight reading. The list of things musicians worry about when they look at a new piece of music is usually the reverse of what a listener responds to. Players fret about the right notes, then rhythm, bowings... the last thing they worry about is dynamics. But if you ask an audience to tell you what they noticed about a piece they just heard, they will tend to describe whether it was loud or soft first. So I always tried to direct my students to look at the dynamics before anything else. If they had to sightread for a judge, and they remembered to do any dynamics at all, they would stand out among everyone else at an audition. When I play at a funeral, most of my dynamic choices are dictated by the noise of the crowd. When there is a lull, it makes sense to take advantage of the quiet to play gentle pieces. I can play things at increased tempo and volume as the tempo and volume of the room rises.
Experienced musicians also know how to embrace silence. Students are scared of quiet. When I worked in the Music Cognition Lab at Ohio State, I was struck by the most common mistake young players made in our experiments. Almost universally, they could not hold the longest note for its full value in the piece we wrote for them to perform. It was only a half note, but they couldn't do it. They couldn't sit as the note decayed under their finger and let the time play out. They had to act, to interrupt the silence and move on, even though nothing about that would sound right if they were listening instead of doing. I find it's especially important when playing music at a funeral to be able to pause, and wait, and let the moment be. That's a bigger challenge when I'm playing alone, because anxiety is what makes you move too soon, and I find performing solo nerve-wracking.
I'm feeling the weight of loss lately. There are names in my address book that I come across when I do holiday cards that I can't bring myself to remove even though those people are no longer with us. There's nothing to send to my husband's mom anymore, or her aunt that we used to visit down in Illinois. My grandparents are gone. My uncle and aunt on my dad's side aren't with us to send pictures to. Several of my friends have lost parents, and a few have lost siblings. When my uncle passed away recently it was inappropriate for me to attend the funeral, and part of me may never get over that.
My father once told me while we were listening to a performance of And The Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach that he wanted me to play that at his funeral one day.
But my dad didn't have a funeral. My dad's death in his home in the summer of 2015 was after more than a week of hospice where everyone who wanted to say goodbye did so in person, or wrote letters that we read to him aloud as they arrived. It was intense and complicated. There was anticipation of grief followed by deep sorrow, along with joy and humor and care. It was a profound time, and one that didn't need to be concluded with a traditional memorial gathering.
Except sometimes I am saddened that I didn't get to perform And The Sheep May Safely Graze on my viola in a space where the people who loved my dad could all be together to mourn his loss. It feels good to do something for someone who is gone, even if it's really for ourselves.
I didn't have any of my instruments with me when my dad died, because I literally dropped the tools from my hands at work when I received the call from my mom in the hospital, and I got straight into my car and drove to Michigan. I did play a little music by my dad's bedside on my brother's mandolin, but it didn't feel like what I had promised him years before.
Every funeral I play, I always add And The Sheep May Safely Graze. It reminds me of what the music is for, and helps me share the grief of those gathered whether I knew the person being remembered or not.
It gives me a moment to play for my dad again.
It's not enough, but it's what I have to give.
