What's your favorite classical funeral music?

Question

I like classical funeral music, like funeral marches and requiems. I like masses too (has grave feeling to it), but that's not really funeral music.

My favorites so far are as follows, but I'm sure there are many more great ones that I have not discovered yet:

1. Mozart's Requiem

2. M. Haydn's Requiem

3. Chopin's Funeral March

4. Mozart's Masonic Funeral March

5. Grieg's Funeral March

Thanks for the suggestions! :)

Answer 1

Requiems by Hector Berlioz and Gabriel Faure,



the third movement "Funeral March" from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 1,



Juliet's Funeral and Death from Act IV of Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet,



Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten,



funereal in character :

Metamorphosen (study for 23 solo strings) by Richard Strauss,

Dolorosa opening to Stabat Mater composed by Giovanni Pergolesi

4th movement Adagio from Tchaikovsky's b minor 6th Symphony,

1st movement to Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 ("Symphony of Sorrowful Songs").



As you mention you like masses in general..

Anton Bruckner's Mass No. 3 in f minor is really wonderful.



fare-thee-well

Answer 2

Funeral Marches

Answer 3

Chopin's Funeral March or Marche Funebre.

Answer 4

1.Handel: Dead March from 'Saul

2.Symphony 3 Eroica 2nd movement Marcia funebre; Allegro Assai

3.The 3rd movt. of Chopin's 2nd pf. sonata (in B♭ minor, Op.35)

4.Chopin's Marche funèbre in C minor, Op.72b.

5.Beethoven's march 'sulla morte d'un eroe'

6.Siegfried's Funeral March from Wagner's Götterdämmerung

7.Grieg's Funeral March for Nordraak

8.Berlioz's Funeral March for the Last Scene of 'Hamlet

9. Albinoni : Adagio In G Minor

10.Purcell - Thou Knowest Lord

11.Verdi - Libera Me (Requiem)

12.Faure - In Paradisium (Requiem)

13.Bach - Erbarme Dich (St Matthew Passion)

14.Handel - I know that my redeemer liveth (from Messiah)

15.Pie Jesu" from Requiem by Faure

16."Adagio for Strings" by Barber



Not all my favorites but are all sad and mournful in their own way. So in that way you can call them funeral music (classical)

Answer 5

The second movement of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony is a funeral march, and is very powerfully moving.

Answer 6

Try some Mahler funeral marches. Can't go wrong with Him.

Answer 7

Taverners 'Song for Athene'...the words are a mix of the funeral service and Shakespear..it was sung at Princess Dianas Funeral as her coffin left the abbey.. listen to it...stunning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II_QgNkG5jg