(Fr. élégie; Ger. Elegie).
A setting of a poem, or an instrumental piece, lamenting the loss of someone deceased. The word is from the Greek elegos, a poem written in distichs of alternate dactylic hexameters and pentameters, and sung to the flute. Classical elegies embraced a wide variety of subject matter, but prominent among them were laments and commemorative songs; Echembrotus (c586 bce) was specially noted for the gloomy character of his flute-accompanied elegies. The music of such classical elegies has not survived, but elegiac distichs by Boethius and Ovid were set by Robert Gaguinus and Glarean and appear in the latter's Dodecachordon (1547). In his 20 Elegies John Donne used the term in its prosodic sense, and the poems are, like the elegies of Ovid and Catullus, mainly love-poems; but in modern usage the term has been increasingly reserved for verses lamenting the death of either a famous person or someone known intimately to the poet. Well-known English examples are Spenser's Astrophel, Milton's Lycidas, Shelley's Adonais, Arnold's Thyrsis and Tennyson's In memoriam, most of which have been set to music.
The earliest surviving type of musical elegy is the medieval Planctus, whose history dates from at least the 7th century. From the 14th century to the 17th two parallel traditions existed for musical elegies: those commemorating patrons (e.g. Isaac's Quis dabit pacem populo timenti? for Lorenzo de' Medici, Coprario's collection Funeral Teares for the Death of the Right Honorable the Earle of Devonshire, 1606); and those mourning the deaths of colleagues and mentors (e.g. Josquin's Nymphes des bois for Ockeghem, Byrd's Ye sacred muses for Tallis, Purcell's What hope for us remains for Matthew Locke). Such compositions were given a wide variety of generic titles, including Déploration, Nenia and Epicedium.
It is necessary to distinguish the elegy from the monodic Lamento widely cultivated during the Baroque period, particularly in Italy. The famous laments from operas such as Monteverdi's Arianna (1608) and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (1689), and from oratorios such as Carissimi's Jephte, cannot properly be classed as elegies, since they are occasioned by the impending death of the character who is singing and not by the death of someone else. Among the finest examples of the elegiac cantata is Carissimi's Lamento di Maria di Scozia (‘Ferma, lascia ch'io parli’), which is both a lament in the operatic sense and a true elegy, since the piece is a tribute to the memory of the character whom the singer is impersonating. The scenes in Handel's Samson (Act 3) and Saul (Act 3) lamenting the deaths of the respective protagonists are often called elegies, although, like the Italian lament, they mourn dramatic characters rather than real historical figures.
Elegiac sentiments are prominent in German Romantic poetry, and thence in the vocal works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Wolf. 19th-century composers often regarded the elegy less as an epicedium for a departed friend or hero than as a vehicle for expressing personal feelings about death. For example, the preoccupation of Brahms and Mahler with elegiac texts reflects both composers' concern with death. Brahms's Schicksalslied, Nänie and Vier ernste Gesänge are not commemorative works, neither are Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde, yet they are all imbued with the kind of expression associated with the elegy. A great deal of late Romantic music might be described as elegiac, and it is no coincidence that the use of the word ‘elegy’ as a title for purely instrumental pieces is common from the late 19th century.
The instrumental elegy can, however, be traced back to the 17th century with such pieces as Froberger's Lamento sopra la dolorosa perdità della Real Maestà di Ferdinando IV (1656) and the various French pieces for lute or harpsichord known as tombeaux (see Tombeau and Dump). Closely allied to these is the Apothéose, exemplified in François Couperin's Le Parnasse, ou L'apothéose de Corelli (1724) and his Concert instrumental sous le titre d'Apothéose composé à la mémoire immortelle de l'incomparable Monsieur de Lully (1725). Such commemorative instrumental works began regularly to be called elegies only in the 19th century. Examples (all for keyboard) include Loewe's Grande sonate élégiaque op.32, Raff's ‘Elegie in Sonatenform’ (first movement of his Suite op.162), Stephen Heller's Aux mânes de Frédéric Chopin: élégie et marche funèbre op.71 and the elegies composed by Dussek (1806–7) and Liszt (1842) in memory of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (the latter using motifs from the prince's own compositions, in the manner of many Renaissance and Baroque elegies). It would not be difficult to mention several dozen other elegies (see MGG2 for a list). Any comprehensive survey of the instrumental elegy, however, should include the numerous pieces that are elegies in all but name, like Berg's Violin Concerto (in memory of Manon Gropius) and Hindemith's Trauermusik (for the death of King George V). Of special interest are the elegiac works of Stravinsky, particularly those written during his last years in memory of distinguished friends (e.g. Raoul Dufy, Aldous Huxley, John F. Kennedy).
MGG2 (W. Kahl/J. Draheim)
C.M. Bowra: ‘Elegiac Poetry’, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford, 1949)
C. van den Borren: ‘Esquisse d'une histoire des “tombeaux” musicaux’, Académie royale de Belgique: bulletin de la classe des beaux-arts, xliii (1961), 253–74 [abridged in SMw, xxv (1962), 56–67]
P. Evans: ‘Stravinsky's Elegies’, The Listener (11 Feb 1965)
V. Duckles: ‘The English Musical Elegy of the Late Renaissance’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966), 134 [incl. list of Eng. 16th- and 17th-century elegies]
A. Robertson: ‘Memorial Music and Laments’, Requiem: Music of Mourning and Consolation (London, 1967), 213–35
MALCOLM BOYD