Clyde Holloway's memorial service

I attended my last mentor's memorial service this past weekend in Houston. An event like that is more like a family reunion than a memorial service. The memories, the friends, (the foes), it's all so strong and vivid that it's worth preserving here in cyberspace.

The service was at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Houston, where Clyde served for many years. Organ music selections were most appropriate: BWV 547 (with which Clyde won the AGO national competition in 1964), the Franck Prelude, Fugue and Variation (which Clyde loved and which the Rice organ played beautifully), the Messiaen Joie et clarté (representative of Clyde's dissertation on Messiaen), and the Final from the Vierne 1st (which was always Clyde's swan song in a given church). In addition, Jason Roberts improvised a brief but stunningly clever prelude which had the basic form of the opening pages of the Reubke Sonata (which Clyde recorded twice and with which Clyde inaugurated the Rice organ), and which also contained brief allusions to the Liszt BACH (which Clyde recorded) and to the Messiaen Banquet céleste (which Clyde used as a teaching piece -- when Jason played those familiar first few chords, there was audible tittering in the nave. It was utterly brilliant and unifying for all of us gathered).

The Cathedral and choir offered their customarily high-quality liturgy. It was a pleasure to be back there. The choir sang the Malcolm Boyle "Thou art praised in Zion" and the Duruflé Ubi caritas. Hymns were sturdy tunes such as Vigiles et sancti and Cwm Rhondda. The eulogies were short and lovely. I was amazed to hear about a younger, healthier Clyde I did not know. Did you know that he once donned a pair of overalls to help paint a former student's barn? But everyone was in agreement about his teaching and his love for his students. The only flaw I found in the service was in the Dean's insistence that a congregation full of professional organists needed to be told to stand and sing the hymns or to sit and listen to the closing voluntary.

Just so I don't forget those I chatted with, in no particular order: Karen McFarlane (Clyde's manager), Daryl Robinson, Pieter Visser, Marty Wheeler Burnett, Marsha Seale, Bob Simpson (Clyde's sucessor at the Cathedral), Jian-Guang Shi, Melissa Givens (my dear friend plus hotel and taxi for this trip), John Marsh, Sandi Ward, Jan Salassi (Jouett, but she'll always be Salassi to me), Anna Marie Flusche (Clyde's first doctoral student to finish), Wick Rowland, Emily Borling, John Meier, Paul Meier, Suzanne Anderson, Jason Roberts, Ann Colbert Wade (Clyde's first graduate student), Ben Harris, Tom Crow, Lucinda Meredith, Glen Douglas, Carl & Pat Hand, Ann Frohbieter, and Linda Hazelip. I probably forgot a few.

Then a few folks I saw at a distance but didn't get a chance to visit with personally: Micki Simms, Cathy Hildreth, George Ritchie, Mary Bahn, Bruce Power, Robert Bates, Matthew Dirst, Chris Thomas.

And of course there were surely some folks there I didn't see at all, plus some who wanted to be there but couldn't, plus others who should have been there but weren't (shame on them).

Rest in peace, Clyde Barrington Holloway II, 1936-2013. Maker of careers, especially mine.