Grave Tidings

Tonight, Sean Shibe and the BBC Philharmonic examine the pageantry, rites and emotions of funeral music, ancient and modern.

From Henry Purcell’s weighty, solemn tones, written for the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695, to Bruckner’s Aequales – intimate, chamber chorales – this is music of memory, grey-dark and silver. Exuberant work by Julia Wolfe and Alex Paxton sits alongside Kurtág’s ‘Gravestone’, trudging, slow, then exploding with red-hot anger.

The heart of our programme comes from Cassandra Miller, our Composer in Residence. One afternoon, Miller recorded Shibe quietly singing along, half-asleep, to a folk song played by Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul. From this, Miller spins delicately warbling ripples.