In the fall of 1987, I was back at Luther for my 5th year reunion. I’m pretty sure it was at the Saturday morning homecoming parade that I bumped into Weston Noble, who was sweet enough to say that he had missed hearing me sing and wanted me to stop by his office and sing something for him. It’s a little difficult to imagine that someone surrounded by beautiful singing as he was would have missed hearing my voice, but that’s what he said – and whether or not it was really true, I was touched that he would say it. At some point shortly thereafter, we met at his office in the Jensen music building, and I sang for him my solo arrangement of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace.”
A quick word about the arrangement: In the fall of 1986, although I had moved to Kenosha, I came down to Chicago almost every Sunday to lead the youth choir at Resurrection Lutheran Church, where I was still a member. And since Monday was my day off, I would typically stay overnight so I could spend the next day in Chicago. But I didn’t really know anybody well enough to crash on their couch, so I actually spent most of those Sunday nights sleeping in the sanctuary (I had keys, so I could let myself in, and the place was always deserted on Sunday evenings. And I would always make sure I was cleaned up and out the door nice and early Monday morning, before any of the staff would arrive. This was pretty daring stuff for someone like me.) And since this was years before laptops and iPhones, I would spend those Sunday evenings either reading … or playing the beautiful grand piano and singing in that church’s lovely acoustics (with almost all of the lights off, so as not to attract attention in case a member of the church happened to drive by.) It was on one of those Sunday evenings that I began playing around with “Amazing Grace” and came up with an arrangement that I ended up singing for church- and it was this arrangement that I sang for Mr. Noble a few months later at homecoming.
When I finished singing it, Mr. Noble looked at me for a few moments, and then he said “Greg, I want you to sing that for my funeral.”
I had my doubts that he meant this literally- but for the next dozen years or so, he would reassert his request whenever our paths crossed (typically once every couple of years.) Sometimes he would say this as a greeting – even before ‘hello’ – and sometimes it would be his parting statement. But he would always say it.
And then at some point – maybe twenty years ago or so – Mr. Noble stopped saying it. Our conversations seemed as warm and cordial as ever, but there was no mention of his funeral or me singing for it. Even in that entire year that he spent teaching at Carthage, the matter never came up even once. I figured that maybe this was something that had simply slipped away from his memory. Or it was just as likely that he might have simply changed his mind- perhaps believing that it just didn’t make sense for any one singer to be singled out in such a way. Whatever the reason, it seemed like this was a wish of his that had simply gone away, for whatever reason – and I let it go away as well, grateful that he had at least said it to me once upon a time.
That’s why it was such a stunning surprise earlier this spring when I received an email from the president’s office at Luther, saying that Mr. Noble had left instructions in his ‘funeral folder’ that I was to sing “Amazing Grace.” (Which explains why he stopped saying it. He had written it down.) I am still incredibly touched (in fact, staggered is the word) at having been given such an honor.
One further word about the arrangement. In 1998, I took my solo arrangement and expanded it into a choral arrangement for my Lincoln Chamber Singers at Carthage. It was an arrangement that Mr. Noble heard at some point – and during his year at Carthage, he had the Carthage Choir sing it on their spring tour. And on two different occasions, the Weston Noble Alumni Choir sang it as well. The arrangement featured all six verses by John Newton, including two that are almost never found in hymnals:
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail- and mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil- a life of joy and peace.
The moon shall soon dissolve like snow … the sun forebear to shine.
But God who called me here below – will be forever mine!
For Mr. Noble’s memorial service, I decided to include a well-known seventh verse that was not written by John Newton but was especially appropriate for the occasion:
When we’ve been there ten thousand years- bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.
And for good measure, I followed up that verse with a brief melodic quotation from Nordic’s signature piece “O Lord God” – from the moment when the choir sings “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live.”
People have asked me how I managed to sing the song without getting too emotional. The simple answer is: I kept my eyes clothes the whole time, except for a couple of brief moments when I needed to glance down at the keys. I was especially careful not to even glance towards the members of Nordic Choir, who were sitting immediately to my left – with my niece Aidan right in the front row. One look at her and I’m sure I would not have been able to sing a note.
