Here in the American South, every black funeral has “Precious Lord” and every white one has “Softly and Tenderly”. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one, and maybe not an exaggeration at all when it comes to “Precious Lord”. I bet you ten bucks you could open the Sunday paper and go to every funeral Leevy’s Funeral Home does and find “Precious Lord” in some incarnation. (I confess, “Softly and Tenderly” is a beautiful song. I’m not even religious. Sue me.)
So, what do they play at funerals elsewhere? What do the Catholics in Pittsburgh do? (I’ve actually been to a funeral there, but the whole thing was so disorienting I don’t remember what we sang. It REALLY SUCKS to be the only non-Catholic in a whole church, by the way, when it’s all your family and not strangers.) What do they do in Copenhagen or Madrid? Tokyo? Johannesburg?
On Eagle’s Wings. My mother never fails to cry when she hears it, since they played it at my grandfather’s funeral. She hates it when they play it during a regular Mass.
At my grandmother’s funeral three years ago, my sister sang Schubert’s Ave Maria. At times, you could hear her voice shaking a wee bit.
(My father said that when he dies, if we play Amazing Grace, he’ll rise up out of the casket and blow the roof off of the church!)
Pittsburgh, Black Methodist (AME) extended family, our funeral hymns (which I sing many of) have been “It Is Well With my Soul” (When peace like a river…) and “Blessed Assurance” as well as “His Eye is on the Sparrow.”
SF Bay Area. Nothing is universal as far as songs go. But Amazing Grace is frequent and Shubert’s Ave Maria is also common. The 23rd Psalm is not sung, but spoken even more frequently. John 11:25 comes very close to being universal at Christian services as something spoken, not sung.
*In 1914 C. Austin Miles wrote the famous funeral hymn “In the Garden.”.
“I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses…”
The hymn stormed the country and… also began a movement in funeral services whereby the mortuary practices… would revolve around the body reposing in the garden.
In fact the movement in Protestant funeral practices…was so strong that funeral homes began to develop facilities which used an indoor garden as the back drop…
These chapels were actually solariums with water falls, plants and flowers, and even live birds flying around inside..*
I’ve been to funerals in my very-kumbayah Franciscan parish of people who were very involved with the parish, and every song was a song of Glory.
I’ve been to many without a single song.
I’ve been to some where it was evident the priest wouldn’t have been able to pick the deceased in a lineup.
I wasn’t able to attend my grandmother’s, but I understand both the funeral itself and the triduos (the three Masses said for her soul in the next three days) ended with the Salve, which is usually sung after Saturday Mass, because she was very devout of Our Lady.
My cousin’s funeral (he was a mountaineer and the priest was an old friend of his from childhood) included a couple of songs mentioning mountains and Santa María del Camino, which is quite a frequent one (“Our Lady Who Walks With Us” would be a translation of the idea, although not of the words).
When I was a kid, my mother used to tow us along to Mass on all her days off. Frequently, weekday and Saturday masses were funeral masses, so I went to a lot of funerals as a kid. At these funerals (Catholic of all ethnicities), no songs were sung.
No songs were sung at the Jewish funerals of my grandparents, but the Torah (or something) was recited by the rabbi, my father, and my uncle.
Got it! 