Last updated on July 7, 2025
The longest serving member of The Compline Choir,
October 1964 to April 2025
60 years and 6 months, minus a few years studying and teaching abroad
A brief retrospective by Vernon Nicodemus
YouTube Video: Hope You Like It, recorded in August 2023 by Justin MacFayden during the weekend that Kenneth Peterson directed the Compline Choir in Jason Anderson’s absence. The background music features the Women’s Compline Choir under the direction of Rebekah Gilmore.
At the beginning of the Compline service on All Souls’ Day the Compline Choir engages in one of the most moving rituals — not musical but spoken. The reader intones the list of all choir members who have died. It is certainly moving to hear the name of the choir’s founder and director, Peter Hallock, but it’s also moving to hear the ever-growing list of names that are unfamiliar to the newer singers. This reading of the Necrology keeps us from experiencing the oblivion depicted by the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 44:9: “And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been…”
One choir member who assuredly does not belong in the above category is Ken Peterson, who is very alive and kicking. When the All-Souls’ Compline Service is over and the choir has filed back into the choir room, many of the “old timers” remark that they had forgotten about one of the deceased members mentioned, but Ken can usually be counted on to fill us in on details and anecdotes about them. Keep reading and you’ll see why.
Kenneth Vernon Peterson: tenor, musicologist, historian, and 35-year computer programmer “day-jobber.” His life is certainly full of impressive aspects, but it is his association with the Compline Choir that stands out to most of us who know him. There are several sources for the actual history of the Compline Choir, starting with the excellent Doctoral dissertation of the Current Director, Jason Anderson. Much of the history of the choir itself or the liturgical Office of Compline can be found in Ken’s book, Prayer as Night Falls: Experiencing Compline (Paraclete Press, 2013).
A remarkable fact about Ken’s membership in the choir is that, even though he had four years of job- and study-related stints in the 1970s away from Seattle choir, his tenure in the Compline Choir was longer than even that of the choir’s founder, Peter Hallock. So Ken is as close to a living history of the choir as we might get — a history that spanned six decades.
Ken joined the Compline Choir in October 1964, when he was 18 years old, and a freshman at UPS in Tacoma. This was less than ten years after the serendipitous informal beginnings of the Compline Choir in a chant workshop. David C. Calhoun, a member of the choir, invited Ken to sing the Compline Service, and the two would journey up from Tacoma on Sunday nights. One of Ken’s favorite memories was visiting the Cathedral during the summer of 1965 with David to see the Flentrop organ being installed. A number of pipes were laid on the south side of the Cathedral, and Ken remembers gleefully going around and blowing on some small wooden pipes!
April 27, 2025, marked Ken’s retirement from the choir, or “translation to inactive status.” It is characteristic of Ken’s love of word trivia and obscure references that he would select the Second Sunday of Easter for his retirement— a day called “Quasimodo Sunday” after the first words of the Latin Mass for that day. Victor Hugo has his fictional hunchback born on that day, and Ken identifies with an early 1980s Gary Larson cartoon of Quasimodo in the bell tower of Notre Dame reading a book titled “Careers in Computers.” But on a more somber note, The Second Sunday of Easter was also the liturgical day that Peter Hallock passed away in 2014.
Ken has always been very active in music in Seattle and elsewhere. He sang at the University of Washington under Rodney Eichenberger, under George Shangrow with the Seattle Chamber Singers, as the tenor in the vocal quartet Circa 1600, with various church choirs (including the Cathedral Choir at St. Mark’s), and many, many solo and ensemble “gigs”. Always an active student of the history and styles of earlier music, he was a charter member in 1977 of the Seattle Early Music Guild (now called Early Music Seattle).
In 1968 Ken received an undergraduate degree in music theory from the University of Puget Sound, and in 1973 received a master’s degree in music history from the University of Washington. Those four years away from Seattle (1973-1977) were always musically very active — teaching in Longview WA and Powell River BC, then a year in England studying voice with Nigel Rogers, singing in the London Chorale and the University of Warwick Chamber Choir (including a trip to Poland and Sweden), and even having a gig with the Taverner Choir his last night before returning to Seattle in May 1977. And as a Compline Choir member, Ken sang in Russia, the Scandinavian countries, England, and Hawaii. Lest we think that Ken was some dour performer of arcane music, he was also an accordionist of considerable talent and played in a Klezmer band.
The fact that Ken is an avid genealogist brings up a point about the members of the Compline Choir in general. We may tend to think of choir members in terms of what they bring to the immediate choir musically, but the truth is that the choir members typically have varied and interesting lives outside the group — as is obviously the case with Ken. This adds a richness to the group dynamic, social and intellectual as well as musical. Ken’s knowledge has certainly been invaluable to the Compline Choir; he has always brought to it immeasurable musical and historical knowledge. His expertise in the liturgical underpinnings of particular pieces sung by the choir has been very important to the group, as has been his historical insight into earlier styles.
This set of memories is of course about Ken. But it is true nonetheless that the Compline Choir is much more than a group of fine singers — it’s collection of knowledge, experience, and musical ability that is truly to be treasured. Ken has always served as a veritable anchor for this august group.
Vernon Nicodemus was translated to inactive status on January 12, 2025, after 38 years of service to The Compline Choir. Vern continues to serve as a member of the Choir’s board of governors.