Music for a Memorial Service
If one were planning your own memorial service, what music would one like to have played? It's an interesting question which I would like to attempt to answer for myself, since I find music often to have greater meaning than words. A significant part of it has to be 20th-century music, because that's been a strong musical interest of mine. Here then is a workable program with a little thought and coherence, one from which to pick and choose.
There's so much music to choose from, but it should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that Bach should figure so prominently in my program, and that there would be a significant amount of 20th-century music. Some pieces that I consciously did not include:
The last section of Bach's St. Matthew Passion; it's just too grand and monumental for any ordinary mortal.
Lutoslawski's Funeral Music - wonderful, but a much too direct and manipulative reference.
A movement from the Berg Violin Concerto - if it hadn't been written "dem Andenken eines Engels" (i.e., Manon Gropius)....
A selection from Bach's "Ein Musikalisches Opfer", but which one?
There may still be changes from time to time.