Funeral Dirges Research Articles

Weeping and Mourning: Funeral Dirges in Honor of General Washington

Yet the American people did find words and actions to express the depth of their sorrow, and the outpofiring of public sentiment which followed the official announcement was both swift and intense. In the two months following the General's death, memorial tributes of various sorts appeared in a seemingly endless flow, quickly plunging the young republic into an orgy of weeping and mourning. Over three hundred eulogies were published in separate editions and those considered most inspiring were then reprinted in special memorial collections.2 Memorial hymns and odes crowded American newspapers and dozens of

Weeping and Mourning: Funeral Dirges in Honor of General Washington

Weeping and Mourning: Funeral Dirges in Honor of General Washington

Johnson's Funeral Writings

So many have died before us, that our deaths can supply but few materials for a poet . . . after so many ... funeral dirges he must be highly favored by nature or by fortune who says anything not said before.' Johnson's remark may have been prompted by the torrent of bad elegy in the eighteenth century,2 much of it servile imitation of Lycidas and of Gray's Elegy, or melancholy effusion patterned after Young's wildly popular Night Thoughts (1742) and Robert Blair's The Grave (1743). Yet Johnson himself found it fit, on a few occasions, to shape the materials provided by the deaths of close and admired friends into a small group of prose and verse epitaphs3 and one fine elegy, On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet. Furthermore, he was interested enough in the principles of the epitaph, one of the lesser of the genres inherited from antiquity, to contribute an Essay on Epitaphs to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1740,4 and compose a remarkably detailed piece of practical criticism on Pope's epitaphs for the Universal Visitor in 1756. Better known than these two pieces, his critical comments in the Lives of the Poets on the elegies of Milton, Tickell, and Gray show that Johnson had formed ideas about the proper way of writing elegy, a closely related genre. There are some grounds, then, for looking at Johnson as a practitioner of the neo-classic genres of epitaph and elegy. The poem on Levet, which ranks among Johnson's best work, would itself justify an inquiry of this kind. Despite the fact that the elegy has been a favorite with twentieth-century readers, and has received sensitive criticism from Bertrand Bronson and others,5 it has not been examined in the full context of Johnson's work in and comment on the elegy and epitaph. Such an examination will show, I think, that Johnson was interested in generic criticism,6 knew and followed generic prescriptions, but did not feel bound by them. His elegy on Levet, indeed, derives much of its character and power from epitaphic conventions. To understand Johnson's work in these two genres, furthermore, is to go a long way toward understanding his total oeuvre.7 Death, and the proper response to it, whether in poems

The E. Azalia Hackley Collection

The E. Azalia Hackley collection in the Detroit Public Library is a collection of music, dance and drama created, performed, or otherwise especially associated with the Negro. It is named after a nationally known pioneer music educator and concert singer who exerted a remarkable influence on Negro music and the young Negro musicians of her time (18671922), including such artists as Marion Anderson and Clarence Cameron White. There is probably no name in America which should be more honored for having stimulated respect for Negro music and musicians than that of E. Azalia Hackley.' Visitors from all over the world have come to see and to contribute to this unique collection. Concert artists and actors make a point of visiting it when they are in Detroit, and the State Department includes the Hackley collection as a point of interest in its tours for various visiting dignitaries from abroad. Selections from it are exhibited about the city four or five times a year. Among the valued items are an original manuscript by composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, who was both of English and African ancestry, autographed songs by poet Langston Hughes and W. C. Handy, a working script used for the Federal Theatre production Haiti, early photographs of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, and a set of scrapbooks of their world tour which is a unique historical record. (These singers were a group of emancipated slaves who set out to secure, by their singing, $20,000.00 for the impoverished school in which they were students.)2 The Detroit Public Library also buys a certain amount of materials, such as records and scores. Money comes from gifts and fund-raising musicals. Purchases made for the collection include books such as Louis Armstrong's Leben, Mein New Orleans, published in Hamburg (which is a translation of Satchmo; My Life in New Orleans), and a group of primitive funeral dirges from Ghana, Africa. Negro theatrical achievements are documented with biographical material on actors and dancers. Records of Negro theatrical history, texts of plays by and about Negroes in production, and photographs of plays and movies in which they have appeared, are also included. Both the programs and program files include numerous autographed materials. Biographies of Negro musicians and studies of their folk music and its influence stand as a tribute

FUNERAL DIRGES OF THE AKAN PEOPLE, by J. H. Nketia. Published by Achimota, Gold Coast, 1955. Blocks and Samples of musical transcriptions 296 pp.

FUNERAL DIRGES OF THE AKAN PEOPLE, by J. H. Nketia. Published by Achimota, Gold Coast, 1955. Blocks and Samples of musical transcriptions 296 pp.

Henry Maudsley, M.D., F.R.C.P.Lond., Ll.D.Edin. (Hon.)

In my endeavour to provide a suitable obituary notice of Dr. Henry Maudsley, I shall make frequent use of his own words. and thus I begin with an extract from his obituary of his father-in-law, Dr. Conolly: “The history of the man is his character. When a man dies who has occupied a conspicuous place in the world's eye, there is a great noise of lamentation heard. At the moment it seems as if nothing ever could compensate for the mighty bereavement. But Nature's serene features, fixed in their majestic and unchanging calm, reveal no sympathy with the sorrows of her children. The individual loss is her gain, death is the new condition of life, and the funeral dirge the song of joy for the new Conception.”