I am playing for a Good Friday service. Along with a few already selected hymns and one duet with cello, I was told I could choose something. One of my readers suggested “When I Am Laid In The Earth” which, without words, sounds quite appropriate. It’s slow and mournful, to be sure:

But some of the attendees at this service are knowledgeable, so while I love the music, and no one is singing along, it just won’t work. Because it could distract the ones who do know these words:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

So something else had to be chosen.

I played the first movement of the Telemann d minor Fantasia for the music director today and, with her approval, that’s what I’ll do. I’m playing it on English horn; it’s just more mournful.

Now I only have to get over this cough, and figure out how to get this sore back of mine fixed. It is very difficult to play a wind instrument while hacking away, and the sore back is just a nuisance.