Funeral Music – Sheet Music & Scores

Music has always played an important role in Funeral services. Browse our sheet music and scores, and let Stretta help you find the right music today.

A short history of funeral music

Since the 13th century, clergymen have gathered in calendar brotherhoods on the calends, the first days of each month, to remember their deceased brothers. As at the funerals themselves, there was extensive singing. Later, choirs emerged from this ritual, to perform motets at funerals, in church or at the grave.

In addition to settings of Requiems, the Dutch composers of the 15th and 16th centuries wrote funeral motets to commemorate princes and rulers, which continued to spread across Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, with settings such as Handel’s Funeral Music for Queen Caroline, Musical Exequies by Heinrich Schütz and Purcells’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary. This began to expand into the secular world with works like Monteverdi’s Lamento d‘Arianna.

In France, the Sarabande was the most popular lament before the funeral march developed in the late 18th century. In the last century, new works such as dirges and epitaphs have entered the repertoire as expressions of mourning and grief.

Popular songs at funerals

Nowadays, pop or rock songs are often played at funerals. Here is a list of popular modern songs for funeral ceremonies:

• Amazing Grace
• Hallelujah
• Stairway to Heaven
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Somewhere Over the Rainbow
• Tears in Heaven
• Time to Say Goodbye
• What a Wonderful World
• Of Good Powers

Funeral Music

• Funeral Music for Organ
• Funeral Music for Choir
• Funeral Music for Piano
• Funeral Music for Solo Voice
• Funeral Music for Strings
• Requiem – Sheet Music