(Lat., after Gk. epikēdeion: ‘funeral ode’).
A term used interchangeably with Thrēnos by the Greeks, and later more often applied to the verses of funeral odes than to musical settings of them. The Queen's Epicedium (‘No, Lesbia, no, you ask in vain’) by George Herbert was set by John Blow on the death of Queen Mary II and published in 1695. Purcell too wrote a superb setting for voice and continuo of a Latin translation of this poem (‘Incassum, Lesbia, incassum rogas’), which appeared in his Three Elegies of the same year.
MICHAEL TILMOUTH