Cormac Rigby

The phone rang during the afternoon. It was news that Fr Cormac Rigby had died. We only met once, when I went to talk to him about sacramentality in the ballets of David Bintley, his close friend.

Cormac (a former BBC colleague - he had been Radio 3's chief announcer) kept writing down the years: he was a better correspondent than I. At Christmas I sent him a recording of Symphonic Variations (he loved Ashton) and I so looked forward to hearing what he thought. When we spoke, he had said of it:

"It is one of the most spiritual ballets and as great a hymn as any of the psalms: a ballet of adoration, purity, beauty of nature, of understanding God, of trying to penetrate to the depths of the universe."

And here is an excerpt from one of his published sermons, recalling the night Margot Fonteyn died, when (presumably the ROH) orchestra played Saint-Saen's The Swan as a spotlight flitted around the stage. "When I look at the white Host held up during Mass, it reminds me of that spotlight, still following the dancer who is no longer there."

I felt a real twinge; both at the news of his premature death (he had been in remission from cancer), and at his offer of a friendship of which I was a little careless. I hope that tonight he has found his life's fulfilment and that he is ecstatically happy. Requiescat.