RSCM Report: Final Thoughts

It should be clear that the RSCM Course is important to me. In these pages, I have sought to explain why. But other things are important too, and I must turn my attention to them. For a while, I will be stepping away from the Music Box. If the Lord permits, I will be back.

As St. Cecilia might say, "Whatever happens, keep on singing."

--------
Among the young people (and sometimes those not so young), there are always many tears at the final Evensong on Sunday, and the ensuing farewells, the Course completed. It is right that it be so, for we do not know when or if we will meet again in this mortal life. Every year, some old friends are missing. The day will eventually come when we will be the ones missing, or when the Course is no more.

It occurs to me that I have probably attended more Courses than any but a handful of people. I began taking boys to Belmont Abbey and girls to Atlanta back in the mid-80's, and have been either there or at the St. Louis course almost every year since. The Belmont Abbey and Atlanta Courses no longer exist, though some of the principals from those days are active in other Courses. The boys and girls from those days are now adults, many of them with children of their own. I very much doubt that I will see any of them again in this life.

But one never knows. This year, Tom O. was with us in the bass section, attending the Course with his wife. Back in the 90's, he and his son, a fine young treble, were regulars at the Belmont Abbey Course. Tom and I were perched almost every year in the very back of the choir gallery at Christ Church, Charlotte for the Sunday Eucharist, standing on the stairs behind the organ case with no view whatsoever of the conductor because the gallery was filled with choristers. We had to sing by sensing when everyone else was singing, and every cutoff was an adventure. Ah, those were the days! Seeing Tom again after all these years made them seem as yesterday when it is past (Ps. 90:4).

As I have said several times in these pages, there is a special bond between those of us who have sung at these Courses, all the more so when we have sung together for a number of years. I believe that such bonds, and the similar bonds one has with others in this life, sometimes people we encounter only for a brief time, are a manifestation of the Communion of Saints which we affirm in the Creed. I can easily think of a score of choristers and directors with whom I have sung who have since passed out of this life, and I miss them, sometimes very much. Once, they were young; they learned to sing in the company of those of the generation before them and in turn they taught us, directly or by example. We are bound as choristers into a seamless web across the generations.

We will see one another again, in this life or the next. We will sing again with one another, and the years apart shall be as yesterday when it is past.