GRAMOPHONE AT FUNERALS

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1933, Page 4

GRAMOPHONE AT FUNERALS

appreciated by mourners.

LONDON, September 21. Records of organ music are an innovation likely to be increasingly familiar in cemetery chapels during the near future. An experiment at the Tottenham and Wood Green cemetery, the installation of the necessary apparatus, believed to be the first of its kind, is attracting the notice of burial boards all over the country. , , “There are few cemetery chapels large enough, or sufficiently well endowed, to have a real organ, Mr Percy Benson, the superintendent, said. “We find, therefore, that gramophone records are a very convenient and an appreciated substitute. Last week, although the installation has been in for only a short time, v.c had eighteen requests for music during tlie services. “The scheme is at present only in its infancy, and our musical repertoire is low.” Mr Benson, who is a past president of the National Association of Cemetery and Crematorium. Superintendents, and is mainly responsible for the new installation, told me- that he usually played Handel’s “Largo” as the cortege approached the chapel door, and Chopin’s funeral march when the ceremony was: over.

Ro put on the record of a hymn tunc hi which an organ accompanied the singing, and explained that a considerable number of such records arc being prepared. 'Mourners will then, if they wish, lie said, bo able to sing a hymn.

Already burial boards in Portsmouth, Leicester, Southampton, and other towns arc, Mr Benson said,, interested in the scheme, and last week he had a visit from Hampstead cemetery officials. Recently 2SO representatives of cemeteries and burial boards in different parts of the country went to the cemetery and heard the music in the twin chapels. On Monday a proposal came before the Eccles Corporation for gramophone music at the cemetery chapels, but it decided' not to proceed with the scheme on the ground that the situation of the chapels would make it. unduly expensive.