I have been charged with organising the order of service for a forthcoming funeral. It’s a task that has forced me to concentrate the mind – and by so doing has thrown me into confusion. The departed one was a committed atheist and there are so many aspects of conventional religious ceremonies that I have enjoyed in life and instinctively want to include. As a child and young man, when chapel was compulsory at my boarding schools, I responded to the language, aspects of the liturgy, the psalms, certain hymns, the music and particularly anthems sung by choirs. We used to be bussed off from my prep school to traditional Welsh male-voice choir performances – you couldn’t help but be moved. I have always been attracted to sacred polyphonic music. I like the flummery (dread word), the theatricality of the incense and the robes, and, like the late historian Paul...
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