Lives Lost: An unassuming maestro of Sunday soundtracks

At funerals, he made the organ moan, and at weddings, it thundered in joy. On Christmas, bells twinkled; on Easter, trumpets blasted. He delivered victorious graduation marches and bellowing birthday celebrations, blaring the pipes and vibrating the pews every Sunday in between.

He was unassuming, egoless and largely anonymous, but in the lives of generations of Catholics in communities around Massachusetts, Joseph Policelli played the soundtrack.

“Joe was music,” says the Rev. Richard Fitzgerald, pastor of St. Columbkille Parish in Brighton, where Policelli was music director. “That was his life.”

Policelli grew up in Medford, Massachusetts, his father a maintenance supervisor for Amtrak, his mother a substitute teacher who gave piano lessons on the baby grand in the living room of their split-level ranch. Policelli was the oldest of three children and his mother’s star student.

His early interest in music held and a childhood as an altar boy and Catholic school student gave way to a half-century career arranging, playing and teaching music and leading church choirs.

He made his mark by carefully selecting music that fit every date on the church calendar and by ensuring an instrument not known for its subtlety fit the mood at any given moment.

“He always knew when to pull back and when it would be full throttle,” says Monica Hatch, a soprano who Policelli hired as a singer. “That was his job as a musician: Not to make it all about himself and to be the center of attention. It’s always about the people.”

Hatch later worked with Policelli at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he taught for 25 years and earned what his sister Lorraine Mayne saw as “a little bit of rock star status.”

Douglas Weeks, who coordinates the school’s music...