The Vatican II funeral rites are mostly a wordy pablum at the best of times. Thinking about the music that will somehow infect the ritual makes me not want to go at all.
I don't remember much about the music at my sister's 2004 funeral except that it was horrible. Caterwauling women with a vibrato organist. And not discretely hidden in the choir loft, as in saner days of yore, but right up front where we can experience the trainwreck without cushion or veil.
The parish church is a beautiful Tudor style building
My dad's and my uncle's Masses in 2009 were likewise festivals of 80's sentimental St Louis Jesuit style schlock and cliche US Evangelical jabberwocky. On Eagle's Wings. Amazing Grace. How Great Thou Art. Testaments to the utter dissolution of Catholicism. I remember thinking that my decision to leave the priesthood was a good one, because I would otherwise have been regularly subjected to this crap for the last thirty years. In context, even Schubert's Ave Maria was a relief.
Is it even worth it to try to find musicians who could play and sing at her funeral without making me want to drive chopsticks into my ears?
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