The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Those who crowded into the Crypt Room on a bitter March night were richly rewarded with a triple feast: first, a material feast of the most splendid food, (“a light supper” indeed!); second, some wonderful music; but third and best of all, Lyn himself perhaps, as he said, marginally more of him than six years ago, but delighted and delightful to be back with us.

Lyn’s choice of music illustrated admirably the chief themes of his life. The rich but sombre tones of Calon Lan, sung by the Treorchy Male Voice Choir spoke of his upbringing in Cardiff, where his mother died when he was 11 and his father only ten years later. If you go in, you’re sure to win, from Iolanthe, marked the contrast with holidays spent in a Somerset manor house, with his aunt and cousins, who introduced him to G & S at the Bristol Hippodrome. Studying in Leeds whilst living at the Hostel of the Resurrection run by the Mirfield Fathers, Lyn paid regular visits to York Minster, especially on Advent Sunday, recalled in his third record, the opening chorus of Bach’s advent cantata, Wachet auf. Going on to Cuddesdon for ordination training, he began to explore the wider world and remembered an expedition to Trebizond in Turkey and how eyebrows were raised at college when two Turkish ballerinas befriended on the train home were invited to Sunday lunch. We tapped our way to supper in the Gregory Room with the Carpenters singing Top of the World – music which had strong associations with happy, sunny Mediterranean visits in the seventies, especially to Gibraltar.

After two curacies in Wales and a first parish in Wolverhampton, which included a hospital chaplaincy, Lyn spent ten years as chaplain to the Charing Cross Hospital; a rewarding but stressful life much relieved by music of all sorts particularly by the soothing tones and words of Anglican chant (choir of Westminster Abbey singing Psalm 15). It was at Wolverhampton that Lyn first got to know Gerald Brown, who later, as chaplain at Milan, a stone’s throw from La Scala, opened to him the world of Italian opera including a memorable visit to Verona to see Tosca (he played us Vissi d’arte, sung by Maria Callas). Lyn was greatly delighted to be asked in due course to succeed Gerald in Milan, where he thoroughly enjoyed Italy and expatriate life. However, towards the end of his time there he became ill, and decided to return to the UK, where he was invited by Philip Buckler, whom he had known at Cuddesdon, to join the staff at Hampstead, so beginning five of the happiest years of his life. The Agnus Dei from Mozart’s Coronation Mass, brought back happy memories of Lee Ward and the Hampstead Parish Choir. A return to the world of opera for the vision of the Holy Grail in the closing bars of Wagner’s Parsifal recalled Lyn’s great debt to and interest in the interaction between Jungian psychology and religion and brought his musical programme to an end.

A life of many ups and downs, a man of vision and serious purpose, a sense of irrepressible fun continually breaking cover, we all went home humming the tunes and chuckling over Lyn’s memories, both those he revealed and those he just barely hinted at. And we remembered with gratitude our own musical legacy from Gerald Brown through which we heard Lyn’s choice of music