What follows is a tribute paid to Lydia Smallwood at her Memorial Service. Lydia was for many years the backbone of the Rodolfus Choir, and she is greatly missed by all who knew her.

Lydia Wyn Simpson was born on 9th September 1944 in Winchester Hospital of Commander John Simpson Royal Navy and his wife Barbara (‘Barrie’), a beautiful former Wren Officer.

John, after spending the majority of Lydia’s first 2 ½ years of life away at sea, was posted with his family to Malta, thence in 1950 to Wetherby in Yorkshire and subequently to Chelsea. At that time Lydia and her sister Helen began learning the piano, both with their mother, Barrie, herself a talented musician and performer, and with one Mary Mitchell who became a significant influence in the Simpson family’s musical and social life.

The family moved to Rosyth near Edinburgh for her father’s next naval job and, taught by a private governess, she won a music scholarship to Felixstowe College. The Simpson family moved to The Old Rectory, (The Old Wreck), Debach, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, Lydia flourished musically and academically at Felixstowe. She was encouraged by her mentor there, Joan Jeffrey, to try for Cambridge and gained a place at Girton, narrowly failing to secure an organ scholarship. There she got to know, during their undergraduate days, a number of young musicians who are now significant influences in today’s world of music. She was a regular organist at her friends’ weddings and it was on such an occasion that she met and fell in love with Geoffrey Smallwood who was recording that event.

In July 1965, just after coming down from Cambridge, she married Geoffrey in her 21st year. Geoffrey and his young wife moved to Kensington where he did wine and she took up her first job as a cataloguer at the British Museum’s Music Library and sang for her friend John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir with whom she had first sung whilst at Cambridge.

The wine profession took Geoffrey and Lydia to Newcastle in 1966. There, Lydia continued to undertake cataloguing for various libraries and museums in the North and in Scotland on behalf of an offshoot of the British Museum and also produced a new performing edition of the Monteverdi Vespers for John Eliot Gardiner.

After they moved to Great Shelford in 1970 with Robin, Adrian arriving shortly afterwards, Lydia became involved in the Cambridge Music Shop and with its founder Harold Woolfenden – Woolfie to his friends – becoming a co-owner of the shop in due course. All choral customers valued her ready knowledge and efficiency.

In 1971 she became librarian at the Rowe Music Library in King’s College, succeeding Jill Vlasto, her director of studies at Girton. At that time, Lydia, her sister, and a handful of those present today, formed the Rowe Consort of eight voices. On at least one occasion this group visited her beloved Framlingham ("Fram") to sing in the wonderful Parish Church where she would eventually be buried. Lydia met many musicians through the shop and she became well known in Cambridge musical circles.

Parenthood, and the passage of both her sons through St John’s Choir School between 1977 - 1983, led to significant involvement with the school both as a committee member of the St John’s Choir School Association, as an active member of the Parent Teachers Association and as a moving force in establishing and coaching the Walmsley Singers, a choir made up of St John’s parents.

A measure of her ‘both feet’ involvement with all that she did comes with her son Robin recounting the occasion when the Cambridge Music Shop’s company car, a Peugeot 505 estate, was used to transport the entire complement of 16 St John’s Choristers, cloaked and mortar boarded, from the College back to the School in Grange Road in one trip. There were three or four in the front with the driver (he operating the gearlever upon which he painfully perched), the remainder stacked in the back seat and luggage compartment in neat rows. No seatbelt laws in those days! 

In recent years Lydia’s involvement with a wide range of organisations and activities has been legendary, and many here today have been part of this modern history.

In the early 1990’s she took over the administration of the Eton Choral Courses. She brought an imaginative approach to all of the planning, not least in broadening the repertoire and encouraging a greater range of teachers to work on the courses. Later, she took over the Rodolfus Choir. Good ideas for the Choir flowed from her imagination, and her influence was greatly to be heard in the sound of words and her sheer delight in the elegance of the English language. She was a most musical singer herself, with a beautifully pure but characterful voice. Her excellent ear for choral sound enabled her to produce some striking recordings for the choir. Her choral ear was matched by her eye for colour and her meticulousness over detail, and she always made sure that the sleeves were planned and designed magnificently, as she did for many booklets and covers for Brian Johnson at Herald. She worked on the committee of the triennial Cambridge Music Festival and producied its elaborate programme, assisted in the organisation of major musical events in Cambridge and singing with her beloved Cambridge Voices. One of her last appearances was to sing Handel solos with the Stapleford Singers in August 2005 where, as one observer has commented, “the serenity of her unworldly singing was complemented by the stunning bronze coloured dress which her mother Barrie had worn at a Coronation party in 1953”.

She continued her CD production right up to the first May Bank Holiday of this year when, resolute to honour her pledge to fulfil this role despite her advanced illness, she was carried on a chair into Swaffham Prior Church, knowing that this experience would exhaust her.

Within the last three weeks of her life, John Rutter wrote his first ever Ave Maria for Lydia, (a great but befitting accolade), recorded it with Clare College Chapel Choir one evening, worked on the recording throughout that night and presented the CD, through Joanne his wife, to Lydia the following morning. This gesture, which so greatly touched Lydia, was typical of the generosity and friendship that was seen so often amongst all who knew her and loved her, and which also mirrored her own talent for thoughtful, imaginative and resourceful friendship which was such a key part of her personality. It was also characteristic of her to plan in great detail both her funeral and her thanksgiving services, both of them in the form of Evensongs lovingly and tenderly sung by her friends the Cambridge Voices. In the Thanksgiving Service, sung to a full St. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge, the final tribute was for all singers in the congregation to come to the front and join in Parry’s setting of Blest pair of Sirens.

Tributes abounded, often from friends and musical associates grateful not only for her hard, devoted work, but for what they had learnt from her. She was highly intelligent, imaginative and incisive. Here are some extracts:

She knew so much because she was interested in things, places and above all in people……You could rarely notice Lydia’s voice in a choir as she made it blend so beautifully, but it was always noticeable when it wasn’t there.

From a much beloved musician friend, writing to Lydia after his last visit:

If I had been able to stay longer…I would have thanked you for the huge help you been to me over the years. But you have not only helped me in practical organisation and with copious ideas, but you have also influenced me in my choral musicianship, for which I am eternally grateful. Your love of words is infectious and your ability to suggest ways to make them clear, elegant and truly communicative is inspiring.And . . . I will greatly miss visiting her at the warm-hearted wood-smoke-scented haven that is The Shepherd's Cottage at Great Shelford (she would answer the phone in sing-song tones with the delightfully old-fashioned, "Hallo! Shelford 2452!"). I will miss watching her fuss lovingly over cats and kittens, almost leap in the air with delight as she cooked and talked of her friends, family or choirs and I will miss sitting by the huge log fire drinking samples of Geoffrey's latest imports of wine. Above all I will miss her wise counsel and warm-hearted, generous friendship.

From a neighbour: Since then we have always come to the famous Epiphany Parties where gallons of friends happily fit into a pint pot.

From a musician and singing coach, to Lydia the week before she died:

Thank you for:

From a celebrated early music conductor, to Lydia

I’m certainly so grateful to you for all you have done to support young musicians like me at the start of what is rarely an easy career. A real rock and support….AND AGAIN…I hope that you will in due course meet up with some of those great musicians from other ages, and that you’ll then find all the answers we’ve sought - as always, I expect you to share the knowledge. Could you possibly check with Monteverdi for me on transpositions of the Vespers, tell Gabrieli what a great composer he is, find some more Bach cantatas – goodness, you are going to be busier than ever and that’s saying something.Thank you for being so much to so many people. You have – and this is surely the ultimate accolade – really and truly made a difference. What more can one ask?

From an Author and longstanding close family friend:

How impossible to believe on a summer’s morning like this that Lydia has died. Thus I continue to think of her as wonderfully alive, hearing that eager voice - and the piano at Debach – and seeing her as a vital spirit in our world. There has to be a huge sadness at this moment, but there will be a great realisation eventually of the Completeness of her life.

And finally from a near neighbour, one of great heart, on the day of her Passing:

TO FRIENDSHIP