Yesterday was a special day for the musicians of New College Oxford; many of us attended a wonderful Memorial Evensong for Sir David Lumsden. The choir was on superb form, singing two works written for it – Harris’s ‘Faire is the Heaven’ and (for an introit) ‘Drop, drop, slow tears’ by Kenneth Leighton – the profoundly moving final movement of his ‘Crucifixus pro nobis’, commissioned by David Lumsden for N.C. choir in 1961.
Earlier in the day David and Sheila’s ashes had been interred in the Cloisters, on the north side near the bell-tower. A finely incised memorial stone marks the spot, close to where N.C. alumnus James Bowman is also remembered.
