Thinking of Resigning
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,176
    The good news is that our 'share of hell' is nothing new: Here is "The Choirmaster's Burial", by Thomas Hardy, which recounts his Grandfather's funeral in 1837, though with a bit of fantasy thrown in.

    He often would ask us
    That, when he died,
    After playing so many
    To their last rest,
    If out of us any
    Should here abide,
    And it would not task us,
    We would with our lutes
    Play over him
    By his grave-brim
    The psalm he liked best—
    The one whose sense suits
    “Mount Ephraim”—
    And perhaps we should seem
    To him, in Death’s dream,
    Like the seraphim.

    As soon as I knew
    That his spirit was gone
    I thought this his due,
    And spoke, thereupon.
    “I think,” said the vicar,
    “A read service quicker
    Than viols out-of-doors
    In these frosts and hoars.
    That old-fashioned way
    Requires a fine day,
    And it seems to me
    It had better not be.”

    Hence, that afternoon,
    Though never knew he
    That his wish could not be,
    To get through it faster
    They buried the master
    Without any tune.

    But ’twas said that, when
    At the dead of next night
    The vicar looked out,
    There struck on his ken
    Thronged roundabout,
    Where the frost was graying
    The headstoned grass,
    A band all in white
    Like the saints in church-glass,
    Singing and playing
    The ancient stave
    By the choirmaster’s grave.

    Such the tenor man told
    When he had grown old.
  • Too, I've known a few priests who admitted to having experienced their share of purgatory from having had to celebrate masses to the strains, thumps, and plunks of happy-clappy faux-folk and sacro-pop combos.
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,913
    Not really sure that's the good news, Salieri ;-/ As many of you must already know, The Choirmaster's Burial is No. 5 of Britten's Winter Words, about 9'33'' into the recording with Peter Pears. (Oops, here it is at the start of part 2.)
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,176
    It mightn't be good news, per se, but I do find some comfort in knowing that when it comes to battles with clergy or influential members of the parish, we're in good company: from people as illustrious as Bach and Mozart in major churches and cathedrals, to the basically unknown, like Tomas Hardy I, in a little parish church in the Dorset countryside.
  • An update: I was offered the possibility of playing one or two Saturday evenings a month, and was told I could do the Heritage Mass (which is what we had been doing before). I decided to take it (two evenings a month), for the income; if it turns out to be too much, I'll just say I can't keep doing it.