However, parodies and Monty Python usage aside, Chopin’s Funeral March is anything but lighthearted, trivial, or a “throwaway.” It, as part of the greater sonata work, has been called “haunting”—so much so that, in fact, it’s reputed that this piece of music was one sure way to get Chopin to end an evening of playing in the salon. All someone had to do was request the Funeral March, and Chopin would be so emotionally undone by its conclusion that all thoughts of further playing were forgotten. One biographer even claims to hear the “pain and grief of an entire nation” in the Funeral March.
The nation in question would have been Chopin’s native Poland, under fire from Russia in the 1830s. As a Pole himself, living in exile away from his homeland, Chopin clearly both sympathized with and worried about the safety of relatives left behind at the mercy of their enemies. As with so many of his troubles, Chopin poured this, too, into his music.
And again, despite comedic or light uses for the themes of this piece, it has been employed in its original intent as well: among those of prominence who have had Chopin’s Funeral March played at their funerals are John F. Kennedy and—in a touch of irony—Russians Stalin and Brezhnev. While you may not play this piece for an actual service, as you do play it, knowing a bit of its background will help you understand and appreciate some of the emotion the elegant Polish composer had in mind when he set this evocative music down for the ages.
