Services for a first lady

The funeral for former first lady Barbara Bush was held today at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, followed by burial at George H.W. Bush’s presidential library at Texas A&M.

The church is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. According to Wikipedia, “It is the largest Episcopal Church in North America with nearly 9,000 members.” (Since there are no “Episcopal” churches in Canada, we assume they mean churches in the Anglican Communion).

As with similar services, it was broadcast live by C-SPAN, and available for online playback.

The blog Ponder Anew has summarized the program for the Rite I service, and the booklet is available online at an Austin TV station. Below are musical highlights, including hymns from Hymnal 1982:

Prelude music

• “Nearer my God to thee”
• “My country, ’tis of thee”
• Hymn 390: “Praise to the Lord”; Tune: Lobe den Herren

During the service

• After the 1st Lesson: “In the Garden”
• Sequence Hymn 671: “Amazing Grace”; Tune: New Britain (V1-2 before, V3-4 afterwards)
• After the Homily: “The Holy City"
• Hymn 376: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”; Tune: Ode to Joy

Postlude

• “Solemn Procession” (Richard Strauss)

A few comments. On Amazing Grace, only Newton’s original four verses are used, not the later epilog (“When we’ve been there 10,000 years”). Except for Amazing Grace, this is not standard American funeral music — the two other tunes are ones that could be sung during ordinary time or any festal season.

Finally, this seems like an unusually brief amount of music for such a grand service in such a large church with a large choir. The opening hymn has a descant written in Hymnal 1982; however, the descant does not appear in the service booklets held by the congregation in the C-SPAN video, nor could I hear it. It is not an English descant, but I think any major English choir would have sung a descant: New English Hymnal has AB Smith’s while the Oxford Book of Descants has Oxley’s.

In fact, it’s almost an anti-Colonial service, opening with a 17th century German hymn. It is followed by the text from an English abolitionist that is far more popular at American funerals than English ones (where it is only #5). It concludes with Beethoven’s most famous tune with an American text, and a postlude by a German agnostic (if not atheist).

Update: On the Facebook group for church musicians, several noted that St. Martin’s has consistently been “low church.” While this term means different things to different people, it tends to mean more Protestant and less Catholic — i.e., consistent with not using English hymns or fancy descants.

This picture shows Barbara and George Bush with their kids at St. Martin’s.

Source: Barbara Bush’s funeral program.