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The Very Rev. Dr. Alan Jones: Palestrina and Yoga

One of our most charismatic deans, Alan Jones, flourished at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and it flourished beside him. Alan died on January 14, age 83. For me he was an attentive mentor, jovial interlocutor, and altogether grand boss.

My 2004 job interview with Alan Jones was like no other. Out of the gate, before the tea was poured, he blazed, “Jeffrey, do you know the Credo of Palestrina’s Missa Sine Nomine?” I demurred, assuming it was a gotcha question, despite Alan’s persistent twinkle. But Alan then explained that he had loop-programmed the passage linking “et sepultus est” and “et resurrexit” to accompany his daily yoga.

This fusion of Palestrina and yoga was quintessentially Alan. “It’s a complex fate being an American,” wrote Henry James, “and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.” Londoner by birth, Alan adapted an American openness and extroversion. He was unsentimental about the United Kingdom and clear-eyed about the Church of England. Yet he often despaired of Americans’ ignorance of history and of the relentless narcissism of our culture.

In teaching as in style, he was a man of contrasts. Alan’s writing and preaching is not for those seeking easy confirmation of prior assumptions or official dogma. His complaint: people think they are thinking, when in fact they are merely rearranging their prejudices. Alan’s “reimagining” of Christianity was actually more Christocentric, more sacramental, than most San Franciscans preferred. Yet there was about him nothing doctrinaire, nothing along party lines. Mirth was made at a staff meeting when he suggested that, were Grace Cathedral to become genuinely diverse, its next clergy hire should be a Republican father of four — from Texas. Churchill quipped that “the British never draw a line without blurring it.” For some, the Alan Jones blur was maddening. But it was never dull.

He continually advocated for the uniquely complicated vocation of a cathedral, as distinct from a large parish. He was a progressive traditionalist. His was a diligent presence at the Daily Office, at odds with the prevailing clergy culture. Shaped by his experience at Mirfield, Lincoln Theological College, and General Seminary, Alan’s understanding of liturgy was, at root, Anglo-Catholic. This had a very encouraging effect on the musicians.

Alan sung at the 1953 coronation, and his playlist featured Walton’s Te Deum and buckets of Vaughan Williams. He even favored Tallis in the Dorian Mode. Alan and I devised annual programs of poetry and organ improvisation. He looked forward to hearing the major Messiaen pieces. He underwrote opera visits for the choristers and visited their annual choir camp. The calibrated cadence evident in his preaching was essentially musical. The relationship of anecdotal detail to the overarching structure of his sermons was symphonic. Occasionally, he would preach operatically; and sometimes we needed no less than that. “The divine is unsayable,” he said. “That’s why we sing a lot.”

Alan was a brilliant leader. He was an adequate manager, so he learned to delegate. But my colleagues on the senior staff felt his genuine concern for their departments, his preference for questions rather than pre-emptive answers, his ready disposition to learn from those “beneath” him.

I learned much from Alan, often only reluctantly. Chief among these lessons was to make haste slowly. Festina lente. In the large and complex institution that is Grace Cathedral, improvements were often hard-won. Another mantra of Alan’s was the query, “When we talk about this issue, who needs to be in the room?” I appreciated his endless humor, often employed to skirt storm clouds ahead. We would stage “hymn interventions” on a Sunday morning: Alan would “spontaneously” interrupt a hymn to exhort the timid congregation to try again, but this time “with gusto, and pretend you’re a Methodist.” From an imperious-looking English dean, height 6-foot-4, this was surprisingly informal. Harnessing that shock factor, he coaxed them along, to general delight.

Like many gifted leaders, Alan’s charisma negatively magnetized some. Some were threatened by what he had built and by the bonds of friendship and influence he enjoyed. There was indeed an aspect to what Alan called “playing in the traffic” that perhaps overcooked his public persona.

But Alan used his cathedral platform to change lives. One December he inserted a surprise — only four of us in the know — within his Midnight Mass sermon. Alan spoke of Irving Berlin’s loss of a young son on Christmas day. A lone treble chorister then sang “White Christmas” unaccompanied, from a distant gallery. Meanwhile, a verger in the catwalks released stage “snow” upon the nave. Surprised gasps; smiles all around. This was Anglicanism, San Francisco-style. It was Palestrina and yoga. And few present will have forgotten it.

It’s tempting to dismiss this “White Christmas” episode — as I had, before conversion — as manipulative nostalgia or unwelcome showmanship. But Alan Jones was attentive to the dark side of institutions and the individuals who run them. A naturalized American, he was vulnerable about his failings and unmoorings. Nostalgia can point the way to something deeper within, he felt, and we need music to thaw our cold hearts. Alan spoke about our wounded joy; about what matters most to us, that when we neglect it, becomes the matter with us — namely, our longing for the love of God. He spoke about how God’s cantus firmus plays out contrapuntally through pain, through alienation. With Wendell Berry’s words, Alan would often commend us to “be joyful, though you’ve considered all the facts.”

May his memory be a blessing.

Jeffrey Smith is professor of organ and sacred music at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. From 2004 to 2009 he was canon director of music at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco.

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