Singing at Funerals and Memorial Services (Critical Essay‪)‬

Music is at least as important at funerals and memorial services as words, though there is far more written about funeral preaching and praying than there is about funeral singing. If we ask people what stands out in their memory about a particular funeral or memorial service, what touched or moved them most, very rarely will they refer to any spoken words. Occasionally they will mention a ritual action (the folding of the flag with honor, the spreading of the pall with tender care), but most often they will talk about music. There are at least four reasons for music's special importance in the rituals after death. First, music connects with our emotions, expresses and evokes them, and makes them humanly livable. Especially when mourners are in the initial state of shock, music will reach them when words are a blur. Music not only helps us express difficult emotions, it also articulates or gives structure to inchoate feelings. Mark Bangert quotes philosopher Suzanne Langer to make this point: "Because the forms of human feeling are much more congruent with musical forms than with forms of language, music can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot approach." (1)