Epicedium

What it means

The epicedium, from the Greek for “funeral song,” is a vocal work mourning a person's death and honouring their memory. Unlike its ancient model, a lament delivered at the open grave, the epicedium developed in the Renaissance and Baroque into an independent compositional genre that could also be performed apart from the actual burial.

Musical use

Epicedia were often written on the death of notable figures such as rulers, scholars, or composers themselves, with text and music together combining grief, praise of the deceased, and consolation for the bereaved. The genre was especially widespread in Protestant Germany of the 16th and 17th centuries, where epicedia often appeared as printed occasional compositions for memorial services.

The epicedium should be distinguished from the liturgical requiem, composed as a fixed part of the Catholic mass for the dead, whereas the epicedium represents a freer, usually secular or occasion-specific form of funeral lament. It differs from funeral music in general through its concrete reference to a specific, named deceased person.

Performance practice

When studying an epicedium, pay attention to the text, since it usually contains concrete biographical or laudatory references to the deceased that make the work and its musical setting easier to understand. Shape the performance with an expression of restrained grief appropriate to the genre, without overlooking the often consoling or transfiguring passages that many epicedia contain alongside the lament.