A funeral march ( in French, in Italian, in German, in Polish), as a musical genre, is a march, usually in a minor key, in a slow "simple duple" metre, imitating the solemn pace of a funeral procession. Some such marches are often considered appropriate for use during funerals and other sombre occasions, the best-known example being the third movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2. Handel uses the name dead march, also used for marches played by a military band at military funerals.
History
Historical origins The custom of accompanying the solemn funeral procession with instrumental music was already present in ancient civilizations in various forms. Both the Greeks and the Etruscans usually employed flute players or, the latter, zither players, as can be deduced for example from the Chiusi cippi illustrated in Pericle Ducati's work. Among the Romans, the traditional funeral (funus translaticium) involved the presence of musicians at the opening of the procession: two cornicini, four tibicini and a lituus, a special trumpet with a soft sound that was well suited to the circumstances. There is sculptural evidence of this ritual in a funerary bas-relief from Amiternum.
17th century
The genesis of the funeral march dates back to the seventeenth century. Originally it belongs to the group of solemn processional marches, military and non-military, and was intended only for practical use in the funerals of illustrious figures. However, already in 1674 Jean-Baptiste Lully used his Pompe funèbre in his opera Alceste.
Other ancient funeral marches, however intended for their own use, are the marches taken from Purcell 's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary (1694), composed for the funeral of Mary II of England (5 March 1695), and the March to the Dauphin's Funeral Home written for Maria Anna of Bavaria and attributed to Philidor the Elder around 1690.
18th century The eighteenth century was relatively scarce with funeral marches, both in military repertoires and in the works of great composers, but it still produced notable examples and, above all, freed the genre from its ceremonial function.
If in the early years of the century Philidor still composed a Marche funèbre pour le convoi du Roy (1715) for the solemn funeral of Louis XIV, twenty years later we remember the Dead marches written by Handel for the Saul oratorios (1738) and Samson (1742). The first is identified in England with the funeral march par excellence and remained in use in funerals until the twentieth century.
The rituals of Freemasonry contributed to the development of the genre at the end of the century. An early example is Giroust 's cantata Le déluge (1784), composed to commemorate a free-mason of the Paris lodge. Even Mozart 's Maurerische Trauermusik (1785), an original composition that combines the cantus firmus with a march and presents various characteristics similar to those of the funeral march, is dedicated to the memory of two Freemasons. This famous Trauermusik is preceded by a Kleiner Trauermarsch (1784) which seems to anticipate its content.
The French Revolution replaced the Requiem Mass with the funeral procession with its triumph being the procession to the Pantheon as for Rouseau in 1994, in what used to be the Roman Catholic church of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris. It is at this moment that the funeral march established itself to the detriment of the requiem as a secular model of funeral music, intended as much for witnesses of civil virtue as for military heroes. Civil celebrations become an essential moment of the new religion of reason, inspiring hymns and other compositions suitable for various occasions, including funerals.
The lacerating Lugubrious March composed by Francois-Joseph Gossec to celebrate the victims of an anti-royalist uprising on 20 September 1790 known as the Nancy affair which marked a decisive turning point. Performed on the Champ de Mars in memory of the fallen soldiers, it aroused great emotion and sets the standard for the nineteenth-century funeral march. The piece was repeated at Mirabeau 's solemn funeral on 4 April 1791. On this occasion, the use of the large drum was particularly striking, appearing for the first time in a musical composition and marking the procession with a sense of fatality. The Italians Cherubini and Paisiello also composed funeral marches for the death of General Hoche in 1797 after he had spilled a lot of blood during the Revolution.
19th century Beethoven and the heroic funeral march
Beethoven's Eroica funeral march is one of the first great works of its kind.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Beethoven adhered to the ideals of the Revolution and borrowed the theme of heroic death from the composers of the revolutionary era, from which he drew inspiration in several works destined to reverberate their influence on the work of romantic. The Funeral March on the Death of a Hero (1800-1801) which is the third movement of the Piano Sonata no. 12, one of the most popular of the century, would have a notable influence on Chopin in particular.
Beethoven was looking for the "new musical paths" (Neue Bahnen) mentioned in one of his letters to Krumpholz of 1802. In this period the maestro from Bonn frequented the funeral march genre several times: for example, the fifth of the Six Variations in F major for piano op. 34 (1799).
But what is of greatest importance is the second movement of the Eroica (1802-1804) which, in addition to innovating the very way of conceiving the central slow tempo of the symphony form, definitively frees the funeral march from functionality to practical use, drawing from it a pure concert piece. The funeral march of the Eroica was not very suitable for use in processions, unlike that of the Sonata n. 12, which remains the only movement of his own sonata orchestrated by Beethoven and which was performed at the composer's funeral on 29 March 1827.
However, alongside the Beethovenian epic genre, different other tendencies emerge. The funeral march that opens the finale of the second act in Rossini's Gazza ladra (1819) (Infelice, sventurata) is renowned throughout the nineteenth century and heralds a new turning point in the evolution of the genre, introducing a previously unknown melodic lyricism. The fifth of Schubert 's Six grandes marches en trio (1824) is in the same vein though it is not indicated by the author as a funeral march but so called in his obituaries and in a piano transcription by Liszt.
In terms of instrumentation, after the first decades of the century the orchestral workforce expanded. Percussions other than timpani, which had so much weight in band performances at the time of the Revolution, also made their debut in the orchestra: in the 1840s, those percussions were fully integrated in the compositions of Berlioz, Donizetti, Wagner.
Romanticism, fascinated by funeral music, further deepened the significance of the composition, using it in chamber music, in the symphony, in the sonata, in opera. At the same time, however, a vast literature of compositions for wind orchestra conceived as tribute and performed at funerals also flourished.
Chopin and the romantic funeral march
The attraction for funeral music was especially intense for Chopin, who knew well the Sonata No. 12 by Beethoven; as a matter of fact, he usually exploited its elements in other compositions. Many examples are certainly familiar to him when he sets out to compose the famous piece around which he would build the entire Sonata No. 2 Op. 35 (1839). In addition to the works of Beethoven and Rossini, the Polish composer almost certainly knew the first movement of Berlioz's Great Funeral and Triumphal Symphony before its official debut in 1840, but it possesses a very different character and in all likelihood represents a model negative.
The funeral marches were performed only an official function, it had almost no theme, the melody was chaste and sinister, the whole structure was oriented towards the solemn celebration. In Chopin's funeral march, the central section in a major mode trio presents a theme that is not only complete, but that can be counted among the melodic peaks reached by the author in all of his production.
In Chopin the funeral march abdicates public solemnity to include a moment of private meditation. Compared to Beethoven, the heroic and glorious dimension has been completely lost: the Chopin trio rather expresses a defeat, for some a prayer, for others only profound sadness, in a humanization of death which has certainly contributed to the popularity of the piece. It is a difficult passage to interpret, not surprisingly criticized and even repudiated as "abominable" by Bülow, or instead considered a "touchstone" of the pianist's sensitivity such as Wilhelm von Lenz.
At Chopin's funeral on 30 October 1849, the piece was performed in an orchestral transcription, entrusted to Reber with Meyerbeer's regret. It is just one of the countless transcriptions for band or orchestra that have contributed to extending the composition's fame.
Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century Chopin's funeral march has been the best-known in the world, and also the most famous of Chopin's works. It was orchestrated among others by Elgar (who transposes it from B♭ to D minor) and by Stokowski, and is often performed at state funerals, for example those of John F. Kennedy (25 November 1963), Sir Winston Churchill (30 January 1965), Leonid Brezhnev (15 November 1982), Margaret, Baroness Thatcher (17 April 2013), and Elizabeth II (19 September 2022). John Philip Sousa testifies that in Australia in 1910 his transcription for band thrilled the audience to the point that it was necessary to repeat it at the next concert.
Liszt and the romantic funeral march The fascination with death then emerged from Liszt 's theme and also took on a personal dimension in the Three Funeral Odes, including The Night (1863-1864), a funeral march dedicated to the memory of his daughter Blandine. Liszt in turn referred to Beethoven, whose funeral march from the Eroica he transcribed for the piano.
The characteristics of the funeral march are found in various symphonic poems such as Tasso (1854), Die Ideale (1857), Hamlet (1858), Héroïde funèbre (1849-1850), Hungaria (1854), where the Hungarian composer deals with both death and mourning itself, and death as a prelude to rebirth. In the last two poems cited the reference to the funeral march is explicit in the time indication .
Liszt's funeral marches or pseudo-marches are characterized by their extreme slowness. Liszt relies particularly on dark timbres and low registers, providing expressive indications such as expressive dolente, feeble, lachrymoso, lamentative, lugubrious, crying. In some cases Hamlet and Hungaria) the one to the funeral march is a simple allusion conveyed by a theme in march time, while in others the composition receives a complete form and includes a trio. Another passage from the Years of Pilgrimage (1867) is dedicated to Maximilian I of Mexico, the emperor of the house of Habsburg executed by the republican troops of Benito Juarez.
Mahler and the symphonic funeral march Towards the end of the century, the funeral march played an important symbolic role in Gustav Mahler's production, starting with the romance Die zwei blauen Augen (1884) taken from the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The composer uses it indifferently in the symphonies (third movement of the first and first of the fifth), in the Lieder and in the collections of the latter.
In the second volume of the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which had a great influence on the first four symphonies and which stood out for the extreme nature of the emotions addressed, the echo of Die zwei blauen Augen stands out, melodically recalled by Nicht wiedersehen! (1888-1891).