Dirge

Song of the Dead is a redirect to this article. For the book by David Lozano Garbala, see Puerta Oscura .

Lamentations are songs (but also poems ) in which the loss of a person or an object to which one had an emotional connection is deplored . Above all pain and grief are discussed, but also the glorification of the dead. Klagelieder as dirges or Totenlieder are a shaped form of lament . With the increasing individualization of mourning, the song of the dead found its way out of the sacred realm and found its way into secular culture or pop culture.

• see also: Elegie , Lamento

Forms in different cultures

• Threnos (or Threnödie) was a song of mourning or lament over the death of a loved one in ancient , Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greece , which was sung at the corpses exhibition and funeral .
• the Mirologion is a lament in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church and is particularly common in the Mani .
• Nänie is the name of a funeral chant that accompanied funeral procession in ancient Rome .
• The planh ( oc. Planh from Latin planctus "lamentation") is a lament of the ancient Provencal trobadord poetry .
• The Complainte ( French complainte "Klage") is a lyrical genre of medieval French and Provencal poetry.
• In the Christian culture there are certain hymns that have action elements. There are also musical compositions such as funeral masses (catholic) or musical exequies or requies . The psalms were adopted from Judaism , some of which are conceived as lamentations.
• The blues , derived from to be blue and to have the blues (German: “to be sad”, “to be depressed”) arose from the suffering of American slaves .
• The Gjama e burrave (German: "The lament of men") is an old, traditional lament that is still practiced in northern Albania today. It must be performed by at least 10 men and is only used on dead men. The Albanian historian Pjetër Marticanaj thinks that the Albanian prince Lekë Dukagjini (1410–1481) performed the lament when the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg died.

Concrete examples

• the lamentations of Jeremiah
• Book of poems Kindertodtenliedern Friedrich Rückert and excerpts of them set to music by Gustav Mahler
• Poem Nänie by Friedrich Schiller

See also

There are several names for the "lament": Threnodie , Lamento or Lamentatio and in English also Dirge .

Web links

Wiktionary: Lamentation  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations