The international as well as the local news is consumed with information about the Maui wildfires where the death toll has risen to 80 and the number of structures destroyed estimated at about 3,000. It’s all a nightmare for the residents of Maui as well as to the entire state of Hawaii. The historic town of Lahaina has been completely destroyed and will take decades to be recovered. It’s all so sad!

I think it was not a coincidence that former Compline Choir member, Markdavin Obenza, posted a couple of days ago on Facebook about visiting St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle where the ashes of Compline Choir founder, Peter Hallock, are embedded in one of the pillars.

If you can believe it, the largest collection of Peter Hallock’s music outside of St. Mark’s Cathedral is in Hawaii at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu! That is because when Carl Crosier took the job of Music Director in 1975, he remembered attending many services at St. Mark’s Cathedral while he was a student at the University of Washington. He contacted Peter about obtaining some of his musical scores which Peter was only too happy to oblige, and Carl would return them, after recopying them in his neat handwriting. That led to a nearly 40-year business association (music publishing company) called Ionian Arts which still exists today, even though two of the principals, Carl Crosier and Peter Hallock, have passed. I remain as the sole proprietor of the company.

Mark wrote: This is where it began for me, before I heard a single note of Renaissance music. My life of music started from this vantage point 23 years ago under the direction of Peter Hallock, who now eternally watches over Compline from his memorial attached to the column. I did not know where this would take me, but cannot imagine a life on a different path, for I am perfectly content.

Another Compline singer, Vernon Nicodemus, who has come to Hawaii a number of times to sing with the LCH Choir, wrote: My involvement with Peter was from 1975 on. It’s extraordinary how so many of our lives were never the same after meeting that great person! It’s hard to explain to people not well-versed in Sacred Music and all its manifestations. To me it bled WAY into the general secular arena as well. The Spiritual nature of ALL music. His was a “way” that inhabited the music emotionally from the inside out rather than technically. Yes, extraordinary in an ineffable way. 

Mark remembered Peter’s improvisation under the psalm tones as being especially devotional, and fortunately the improvisations were recorded, and some even transcribed. Kenneth Peterson, a Compline singer for over 50 years, and author of “Prayer as Night Falls,” posted this recording:

Words: The Book of Common Prayer 1979.
Music: Peter R. Hallock (b. 1924), written mid-1980s.
Recording: The Compline Choir, CD “Feathers of Green Gold,” 1994.

Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.

You trace my journeys and my resting‑places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.

Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.

You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”

Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.

For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!

If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.

They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.

Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.

Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.

Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.