Presbyterian composer Hal Hopson is remembered for his many gifts to choirs and congregations large and small

LOUISVILLE — Presbyterian composer Hal Hopson, whose gift was to make his beautiful works accessible to choirs and congregations great and small, was remembered Saturday for the more than 3,000 pieces he created during a prolific and rich lifetime.

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Hopson died July 20 at age 92. A service to the witness of the resurrection was held Saturday online and at University Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. The Rev. Matt Gaventa and the Rev. Judy Skaggs officiated.

Hopson’s glorious music, including “The Gift of Love” and “We Wait the Peaceful Kingdom,” were sung by a chorale from these PC(USA) congregations: Covenant, Hope, Preston Hollow in Dallas, University, Westlake Hills, and Westminster, as well as University United Methodist Church. Nick Boltz conducted the large choir, with Keith Womer on organ. Santana Rojas and Ryan Manders played their trumpets and Scott Avant and Matthew Flores were on trombone. Tyler Dempsey played timpani and Stephanie Hazlewood and Chuck Hazlewood were on handbells. The bulletin for Saturday’s service is here.

Dr. Charlotte Kroeker, executive director of Church Music Institute, remembered Hopson as a listener “who addressed needs wherever he found them.”

“He was a musician who thought theologically,” Kroeker said. “His tunes have a simple elegance without being simplistic.” He wrote for both large and small choirs and, toward the end of his life, for one consisting of three basses and five handbell ringers, a challenge Hobson rose to.

“Hal is in the stream of fine composers like JS Bach, who wrote to the glory of God in service to the church,” Kroeker said.

Maria Aggen, the oldest daughter of Hal and Martha Hopson, told the story of the day her father, then a young adult, almost landed in jail. While hitchhiking, he accepted a ride from what turned out to be robbers who were involved in a fatal car crash. Police had questions for Hopson once he came to at the hospital. Fortunately, Hopson’s mother was at his bedside to assure police her son had nothing to do with the robbery.

“Dad’s life was a tapestry woven with music, curiosity, humor and love. He poured himself into everything he did,” Aggen said. “We carry forward the joy, creativity and passion he instilled in us. In that way, his song will never end.”

Carol Hopson Herriage, the Hopsons’ youngest child, spoke fondly of the Steinway piano her parents sacrificed to purchase. Over the years, the keys were dotted with correction fluid mixed with flecks of pencil erasers. Each Advent when the family went out to secure its Christmas tree, her parents had them sing all four verses of “Joy to the World” in three-part harmony. “That was more important than getting the tree,” she said.

“He was friendly and curious,” she said of her father. “He loved discussions and he loved being a Presbyterian.” If Hopson read an article that reminded him of someone he knew and loved, he’d clip it and mail it to them, along with a hand-written note.

“He did not stop growing, especially at the end of his life,” she said. “At the end, he said, ‘My family is my greatest joy.’ We heard you, dad, and we are grateful.”

Their brother John told the story of having to write a statement of faith at age 13 in order to join the church where his father worked. “For whatever reason, it didn’t land with me,” he said, “and I was concerned about that.” He thought it might be a problem for his parents, “but it wasn’t.” His father “had some thoughts and questions, and they came from a place of love. Ultimately he let me know I was OK the way I was. I think that speaks to he was, a person who felt things deeply but didn’t require a lot of purity tests from people.”

“I always appreciated that,” he said, “and it’s one of the many things I’ll miss.”

Skaggs and Gaventa read Revelation 7:9-17, a vision of a spectacular heavenly choir, and Luke 18:15-17, Jesus’ description of a heavenly realm that welcomes and appreciates children.

Gaventa described the choirs that would sing in each of those realms.

In the first, the choir has rehearsed for weeks, “and every organ stop is open for business. This is high church pageantry at its very best,” he said. “These are seasoned musicians” who have “come through the great ordeal. This is the adult choir of the kingdom of God.”

In the gospel reading, “Jesus himself imagines something a little different,” Gaventa said. The problem here is the disciples “have taken it upon themselves to make sure Jesus meets with only the most senior and most dignified members of the church,” he said. “Jesus, of course, will have none of it.”

Luke’s Jesus “gives us a vision of a heavenly choir that looks a little different,” Gaventa said. Children are running everywhere. The instruments are a little out of tune, and the choir is more like a popup choir, “a choir of the folks who show up that day,” Gaventa said. “This is a choir of the willing, and not of the experienced. You can’t earn your place in this choir. You just show up.”

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Gaventa has seen Hopson listen to and appreciate both kinds of choirs, one at a nursing home where church members were singing Christmas carols. “We could barely find the key,” Gaventa said. After a particularly rough go with the first verse of “Angels We Have Heard On High,” Hopson paused and then told the singers, “Let’s try that again, but this time …”

“Mostly I remember the look on his face. It was the same look he had when an idea had taken hold in his imagination,” Gaventa said. “It was a look of childlike joy,” a look Hopson now wears surrounded by the heavenly choir.

Even in that choir, Gaventa hears Hopson saying, “OK, let’s try that again. But this time …”

The chorale then sang one of Hopson’s best-loved works, “The Gift of Love.” In a prayer, Skaggs thanked God for Hopson’s many gifts “and the marvelous way he shared them with the world.”

After the choir and the congregation sang Hopson’s “The Canticle of Simeon (Nunc Dimittis),” Womer drew the service to a close with Hopson’s rousing “All Creatures of Our God and King.”