Thanks Dad, for all the music
My eulogy, read at my father’s funeral, September 2018
There are so many things to talk about in a father-son relationship, and I had three weeks to write this. This file was version 18. In the end, I’m only going to talk about music because, in the process of writing, I learnt how important it was for us.
This eulogy to you dad is no longer about:
- The trials and tribulations of a father-son rivalry (beating you at chess at 8, being the DIY person at home from age 12, coping with boredom better than you ever could, …)
- It isn’t either about you not being a natural dad from the start, but becoming a great dad in the end: having the father-son sex-talk, at 80 — agreeing on how scary women can be, being my chief confidante during my divorce, calling me every day and jumping onto a Eurostar at 85 when I was at my lowest, …
Music
Dad, you gave all of your children the desire to think, to travel and to question the world around us, as you did until your very last day. But you gave something special to only me.
Making music with you was about sharing beauty, and often perfection. In over 40 years of playing together, we had a fantastic journey.
Early on, we both resented that Mozart was too “modern” to compose for the recorder and didn’t like the flute, so we made do with Handel, Telemann and oh Bach. He’s never left the centre of my musical life, so thanks dad, for introducing me to him.
I realise only now to what extent our music-making was the heart of our relationship. It was our special bond.
At the beginning of my journey to manhood, it was through music that I understood, for the very first time, that my dad wasn’t superhuman after all. I was so devastated when I realised that you couldn’t sight-read any music under the sun that I can still remember how that pain felt.
In music, we were a team.
I was only able to play the 1st movement of Bach’s B minor flute sonata in one go with you. It’s so long that one invariably stumbles, we knew each other so well that we’d always fall back on our feet.
We never argued during our hundreds of hours playing together.
Three years ago, in a Facebook post, you described your favourite — and almost daily — fantasy. You’d be playing great 20th Century classical music on your fancy Bose hi-fi in your office at home, especially Shostakovich, also Sibelius.
On the sofa behind you, well supplied with 21st-century hearing aids, sits, yes, Beethoven.
You think Shostakovich, and Sibelius, are nearly in his league. You’re dying to know how he reacts. So, with your broken childhood German, you find out. Then you put on his music. What does he think of the way we do Beethoven today?
He loves our big orchestras, but not so much the tempos: he agrees with you that our younger performers get carried away by the pace of things today. And as you go back to exploring, you hope he hates Wagner, as you do.”
You were classical, romantic and often modern in your music, yet together we were almost exclusively baroque.
As you wanted for us to play together, and because of my Bach-thing, you obliged. We became baroque players in a world of strict rules, where beauty sprang from the subtlest of novelties or a barely noticeable bending of the rules.
So, your reputation for being demanding is unjust, in our music at least, you did most of the giving.
You hated having to abide by rules in real life, yet you were ever so obedient in music. You hated any arrangement of a masterwork, for example. Fooling around with an orchestration set down by Ludwig himself, was sacrilegious. How could anyone dare tamper with what’s already perfect?
You’d have initially objected to my choice of the Swingle Singers for Beethoven’s ode to joy that we just listened to, just like your wife and sister did.
But your years in Bill Tamblyn’s choir, learning to sing and enjoy so many kinds of music changed you. You’d have opened up to this beautiful a Capella version, just as Dot and Marlene did, and we could have talked about it endlessly. You’d have accepted that the Swingle Singers didn’t disrespect one of the greatest melodies of all time. In the sixties, the group sang much jazz. Yet although they never once used any groove or dared to touch the already perfect harmony, they nevertheless found something entirely new and contemporary in the masterpiece’s essence. You’d agreed that there’s something new there.
It was heart-wrenching to choose the ultimate piece of music your body would feel the vibrations of. After much discussion between your sister, your wife and your children, we couldn’t escape HIS pastoral symphony. The one you always talked to us about when we were children. You know, the rain, thunder, dancing elephants and stuff. I chose the quieter shepherd’s song that welcomes the world back after the storm in a version by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra.
In just a few minutes that shepherd will guide your body through the flames.
Dad, I’ll miss you.
I’ll miss playing music with you so much, dad.
I’ll miss not seeing you at the patriarch’s table at my kid’s weddings,
I’ll miss our tireless Trump discussions, even if they were getting tired of late,
I’ll miss getting cross at how far you’d go to understand brexiteers,
I’ll miss your curiosity and the odd article you’d send to me, like just two months before you died, a study on cryptocurrency,
I’ll miss those extremely short “catch-up” phone calls when mum was out — we could share news of every family member on both sides of the channel — including jobs and animals — in less than 5 minutes, it took at least an hour with mum.
If you were here, you’d have told us that the world is for the living. So, I will carry on with our music and make sure I get as much life done as I can. I am now the oldest man in our family tree, and I promise one more thing that you’d have wanted above all else: I’ll always be there for your beloved wife.
Bye, Dad.
[PS: if you’ve got this far and want to know a bit more about who my dad was, take a lookat this orbit here for an example]
