On Funeral Music

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As November 2nd approaches, I have been preparing for my favorite liturgy of the year: the Solemn Requiem for All Souls. A big part of why I love it so much is because I get to sing what I will argue is the most powerful piece of liturgical music ever written, the Dies Irae. In addition to sounding positively heart-stopping, the lyrics are so solemn and convicting. Take this excerpt for example:
Then shall with universal dread/ the Book of Consciences be read/ to judge the lives of all the dead.
For now before the Judge severe/ all hidden things must plain appear/ no crime can pass unpunished here.
O King of dreadful majesty!/ grace and mercy You grant free;/ as Fount of Kindness, save me!
It fills you with such a sense of dread and awe! You can't help but leave that Mass with an acute awareness of your own mortality and need for conversion and mercy.

Contrast that with the sentiment at most modern funerals. Its not unusual to leave feeling more like you attended a beatification than an occasion to pray for a departed soul. And it certainly doesn't help when all the songs you hear are focused on how the departed is now "soaring on eagle's wings..."

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