ON 26 April 1946, nearly two years after his death, Sir Henry Wood's ashes were laid to rest in the Musicians’ Chapel of St Sepulchre's, London. Musicians, colleagues, and friends – along with TV cameras – crowded the hushed church to say a final farewell. ‘Not only did he serve his day and generation: he created an institution’, eulogised Lord Jowitt, ‘and in creating it he became an institution himself.’ It was a day for dedications. Walton's setting of the Poet Laureate John Masefield's ode to Wood, Where Does the Uttered Music Go? (sometimes titled Sir Henry Wood), was premiered by the BBC Singers and Chorus, and Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, written for Wood's Jubilee, was performed by many of the original soloists. By all accounts it was a moving and beautiful service, but it did not include any Bach. Try as you might, you don't get to choose your legacy. Wood wanted to be remembered for more than being the ‘Conductor of the Proms’, but that is what he got – however elegantly put and well-deserved it was.

However, as part of the proceedings a new stained-glass window was unveiled above where Wood's ashes lay – and Bach is there in its jewelled light. Designed by Gerald E.R. Smith in collaboration with Frank O. Salisbury (who had painted Wood's portrait in 1943), the window (shown in Plate 50) was dedicated to Wood in the name of ‘Musicians and Friends of Music’, and the images reveal his lifelong activities in the arts.

The writer and broadcaster Alec Robertson wrote a description of the window and its symbolic meanings for the order of service. Beginning with the top pane, the luminous figure of Christ on the cross, he noted: