ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several kinds of mourning, and at representative pieces of the music of mourning. Blessed are those who mourn, says Christianity, but this is not true if people are condemned to mourn. Mourning is a forgetting in the form of remembrance. Mourning has a deep root in the Western musical tradition. Mourning is very particular, like love; it marks an absolute relation between two people, not just a fixed relation. The chapter considers some different aspects of mourning. First, that to do with love and memory; second, religious mourning; and third, mourning that has to do with "the soul of the world". Memory is one part of mourning; the other part is dashed hope. In both cases one mourns a loss. Fear makes mourning harder, because the mourner fears the grief that their mourning might turn into. Mourning humanizes religion and brings the religious authorities down off their pedestals and out of their caves and hermitages.
