Marche funèbre
2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, tam-tam, strings
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
This funeral march, written in 1820 for a service in the French Royal Chapel, was not published until 1981. If Cherubini was criticized for the shocking single stroke of the tam-tam in his Requiem, the dramatic effects in this march go much further. The piece opens with a solo stroke of the tam-tam, followed by a measure for solo timpani and then impassioned dissonances in the orchestra. The sound of the tam-tam, or low gong, which is used continually throughout the work, was not a common effect but it was not new. It had been introduced into orchestral music nearly thirty years earlier, when François-Joseph Gossec used it in his funeral music for the French revolutionary hero Mirabeau, and it had been occasionally employed by other composers. As we might expect from a march, this is ceremonial music, but despite its use in the Royal Chapel, it indulges freely in theatrical effects.
