LUKY;
MY PARENTS WERE MARRIED DURING THE DEPRESSION YEARS in Holland.
An uncle of my father's in Amsterdam led a choir of 160 men, all unemployed. To keep them motivated and off the streets, he spent many hours training them to sing the most complicated scores. My father used to go to his uncle's parish and would praise the choir.
Shortly before my parents' wedding, my father's uncle called to see my dad. "Gerard", he said, "how would you like my boys to sing at your wedding?"
"Good grief, Uncle," my father replied, "I couldn't possibly pay them all." "Never mind the money", said uncle, "Could you manage 160 cigars?"
"Of course", answered my dad, who himself smoked up to 50 cigarettes a day. So the 160 cigars were bought and the choir sang like the heavenly host. My dad told me about the Magnificat. I know it, I've heard it sung in Lourdes, and it would melt a heart of stone.
The choir sang the Ave Maria as my mother laid her bouquet in front of the altar of our Blessed Lady, and the Mass was sung in five parts.
My own wedding in Johannesburg twenty-five years later was a quiet one, with only my parents, sisters and brother present, and one friend of mine and one of Sean's.
Although it was such a small affair, I wore a wreath and veil, deciding that you dress up for the bridegroom rather than for the guests.
My father had not exactly struck it rich during the eight years since he had immigrated to this country, and though my husand and I earned good salaries, our car and furniture had taken all the savings we had.
"Its a flop all round", I thought to myself, "but at least there'll be the music."
The year was 1960. Some of you will know that the new Cathedral of Christ the King was then almost completed. As I entered the old Kerk Street Church for my wedding the most disappointing thing happened.
Instead of the wealth of sound I had expected from the choir loft, there came a thin, reedy Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. Though the organist played it expertly, the sound was all but lost in the Church. Alas, most of the organ had been dismantled and transported to the new Cathedral the previous week.
That same month, Princess Margaret had married Anthony Armstrong-Jones, and seeing her wedding on the cinema news and hearing Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary played with such verve, I couldn't help wishing our wedding had been a little more glamorous.
The music didn't worry my husband, but he felt envious when he read about the Queen's lending her yacht Britannia to the young couple for the honeymoon, while he and I repaired to our flat in Brakpan. Yet the contrast between the splendid music at my parents' marriage and the disappointment at my own did some good. Till then, I had always expected the Church to run by itself. I didn't know whence came the flowers, whence the music. They had simply always been there.
Now I realised that someone had to make them happen, like the great uncle of mine who took 160 unemployed men from the streets and restored to them their dignity and optimism in the choir loft of their Parish Church.
So we had our eldest daughter trained to be a church organist, starting with the piano in sub B. I know that this column is read by earnest young parents and sons and daughters who might be prepared to sacrifice the time and the money it would take to have their children trained to be the church organists of the future.
Remember, it is music which welds the wedding service together. It is music which turns the attendance of Mass into a deeply joyous experience.
Let's encourage our children to contribute to the making of music in our churches, to sing in the choirs and play the instruments. If you decide to do that, you will discover, as I did, that though you may sow in tears, you will reap in joy.
Ave Maria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUnrLMvpQLk
Ave Maria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVz6vuNq7s
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