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threnody

{{short description|Song, hymn or poem of mourning}}

{{other uses}}

{{More citations needed|date=October 2017}}

File:Treny normal.jpg with his dead daughter in a painting by Jan Matejko inspired by the poet's Threnodies]]

A threnody is a wailing ode, song, hymn or poem of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. The term originates from the Greek word θρηνῳδία (threnoidia), from θρῆνος (threnos, "wailing") and ᾠδή (oide, "ode"),The Oxford Companion to Music (2010).{{cite web|title=Threnody|work=Online Etymology Dictionary|url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=threnody&allowed_in_frame=0|access-date=13 October 2017}} the latter ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂weyd- ("to sing") that is also the precursor of such words as "ode", "tragedy", "comedy", "parody", "melody" and "rhapsody".

Similar terms include "dirge", "coronach", "lament" and "elegy". The Epitaphios Threnos is the lamentation chanted in the Eastern Orthodox Church on Holy Saturday. John Dryden commemorated the death of Charles II of England in the long poem Threnodia Augustalis, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a "Threnody" in memory of his son.Grove Music Online (2010).

Examples

In written works:

{{sources|section|date=June 2023}}

  • Countee Cullen's "Threnody for a Brown Girl"{{Cite web |last=Poetry Foundation |date=January 28, 2022 |title=Threnody for a Brown Girl by Countee Cullen |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/16765/threnody-for-a-brown-girl |magazine=Poetry magazine}}
  • Bruce Dawe's poem "Homecoming"Pierce, Peter (2002). [https://books.google.com/books?id=8Bx1ra17eH8C&dq=homecoming+dawe&pg=PA133 "Australian and American literature of the Vietnam War"] in Australia's Vietnam War, p. 132. Texas A&M University Press. {{ISBN|1585441376}}.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Threnody"Emerson, Ralph Waldo, [https://emersoncentral.com/texts/poems/threnody/ "Threnody"]. From Early Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, New York, Boston, Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, 1899.
  • Peter H. Gilmore's "Threnody for Humanity"
  • A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"
  • Jan Kochanowski's "Laments"
  • Yusef Komunyakaa's "Sunset Threnody" in Dien Cai Dau (1988)
  • Anna Stanisławska's Transaction, or an Account of the Life of an Orphan Girl told through Mournful Laments in the Year 1685{{cite journal |last=Peretz |first=Maya |year=1993 |title=In Search of the First Polish Woman Author |journal=The Polish Review |volume=38 |issue=4 |page=470}}

In classical music:

In jazz:

In film and other music:

See also

References

{{Reflist}}

Bibliography

  • Marcello Sorce Keller, "Expressing, Communicating, Sharing and Representing Grief and Sorrow with Organized Sound (Musings in Eight Short Sentences)", in Stephen Wild, Di Roy, Aaron Corn, and Ruth Lee Martin (eds.), Humanities Research: One Common Thread the Musical World of Lament, Australian National University, Vol. XIX (2013), no. 3, 3–14.

External links

  • {{Wiktionary-inline}}

Category:Death music

Category:Genres of poetry