What piece of music do you want played at your funeral?

[m_gigena]

I called it first: Bruckner's 7th symphony second movement.

in fact i told a friend about it already, when i die, i want the adagio to bruckner's 7th be played!

What if your friend dies first?

[Bonehelm]

What if your friend dies first?

Ohhhh !!! 

[max]

Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music, the Istvan Kertesz version and Schubert's Deutsche Messe. I also wouldn't mind the Sailor's chorus from the Flying Dutchman. .

But I won't object if only the long silences of a Bruckner symphony are 'played'.

[Valentino]

That's good fun! Zeeleute, Zeeleute! at a funeral says something.

[mahlertitan]

What if your friend dies first?

good riddance.

[carlos]

I would accept any piece; only want it to sound

loud enough so as I could hear it well.

[BachQ]

Cherubini, Marche Funebre

[Haffner]

Mahler 4, 4th mvt makes sense as the soprano sings about the delights of heaven.

Wunderbar!

[Bonehelm]

I would accept any piece; only want it to sound

loud enough so as I could hear it well.

I'm afraid that's going to need an earth-shattering, Mahlerian piece and orchestra !  0:)

[Haffner]

Has anyone mentioned the first movement of Mahler's 9th, or the last of his 6th?

[greg]

4'33"

[Haffner]

4'33"

Huh?

[Solitary Wanderer]

Huh?

Its 4'33" of silence by Glass, Reich or Riley [?]

[Haffner]

Its 4'33" of silence by Glass, Reich or Riley [?]

OOOOOooohhhh (Andy makes a sound halfway between a "duh" and "doh".)

Thank you, SW!

[Solitary Wanderer]

OOOOOooohhhh (Andy makes a sound halfway between a "duh" and "doh".)

Thank you, SW!

I just did a search. Its by John Cage from 1951

[Solitary Wanderer]

Heres the score

[PSmith08]

Heres the score

You sure? I thought Cage just marked three movements "tacet," as opposed to setting out anything in stave notation.

[Solitary Wanderer]

You sure? I thought Cage just marked three movements "tacet," as opposed to setting out anything in stave notation.

This is the link I found

I, too thought the 'score' looked 'odd' 

[orbital]

Funerals in the synagogue?  I think you mean the memorial chapel.  they never bring a dead body into the Shul. 

I mean the part where there is the religious ceremony (the car with the casket waiting outside) inside the synagogue. But that is all there is to a Jewish funeral AFAIR  

[PSmith08]

This is the link I found

I, too thought the 'score' looked 'odd' 

The score there is to Allais' "funeral march," here is the description of Cage's score:

The original Woodstock manuscript, dated August 1952, is now lost and was written in conventional grand staff notation, containing measures of silence. It is here referred to as the Woodstock ms. It was this score that David Tudor used for the premiere performance. Tudor made at least two reconstructions of this score for his own performances.

      The original was on music paper, with staffs, and it was laid out in measures like the Music of Changes except there were no notes. But the time was there, notated exactly like the Music of Changes except that the tempo never changed, and there were no occurrences -- just blank measures, no rests -- and the time was easy to compute. The tempo was 60.47

The second manuscript (1953) was a birthday gift to Cage's friend, Irwin Kremen, and is here referred to as the Kremen ms (Kremen manuscript). It was written in graphic, space-time notation, where each movement was drawn as a time line in which each second is equal to an eighth of an inch. This is one of Cage's earliest graphic scores. It specifies the movement lengths as: 30", 2'23", and 1'40". In 1993, it was reproduced in Peters edition 6777a.

A third version, here designated First Tacet Edition, is the one that is most well known and used by performers and is now out of print, Peters No. 6777 (1960). The author has not seen a manuscript version of this edition. It is a typewritten score that simply lists the three movements with Roman numbers with the word "TACET" (silent) below each. Below that is the following statement:

      NOTE: The title of this work is the total length in minutes and seconds of its performance. At Woodstock, N.Y., August 29, 1952, the title was 4'33" and the three parts were 33", 2'40", and 1'20". It was performed by David Tudor, pianist, who indicated the beginnings of parts by closing, the endings by opening, the keyboard lid. However, the work may be performed by (any) instrumentalist or combination of instrumentalists and last any length of time.

      FOR IRWIN KREMEN                               JOHN CAGE

This statement is very curious. The timings Cage gave here for the Woodstock performance are not correct, because the original printed program shows that the timings were not 33", 2'40", and 1'20", but 30", 2'23", and 1'40". This raises an important question: Why would he give incorrect timings for the Woodstock performance? (A proposition is given below.)

A fourth version was a facsimile of the Kremen ms, but reduced in size, and was printed in Source in July, 1967. In performance it is the same as the original Kremen ms. It is here referred to as the Source Edition.

A fifth version, published by Henmar Press in 1986 curiously carries the same Peters listing (No. 6777). Here referred to as the Second Tacet Edition, it is nearly the same as the first, with the important exception that it was printed in Cage's own calligraphy, with the following statement added before the last sentence of the above:

      After the Woodstock performance, a copy in proportional notation was made for Irwin Kremen. In it the timelengths of the movements were 30", 2'23", and 1'40".

This is a puzzling statement. How could one have been a copy of the other when the timings were different? (The timings are the essence of the piece.) Of what is the Kremen edition a copy? It could not have been a copy of the original, since the original was lost. Additionally, the original timings were not 33", 2'40", and 1'20" but the ones Cage made for the Kremen ms. It is also significant that Cage does not state that the piece was recomposed. One possible hypothesis is that the Tacet Editions were secondary, and that they were made in error.

A sixth version is Peters No. 6777a (1993), which is an exact reproduction of the Kremen ms. It is referred to here as the Kremen Edition.

The following table shows the movement lengths for the two different timings represented in the various versions. The proportions shown are the percentages of the total length.

I don't think I'm going to get too worked up over all this, then.