Funeral playlist

The deliberately insensitive male characters in Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity" are tasked at one stage for creating a "'Laura's Dad Tribute List". There's one passage as follows...

- 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.'
- 'Just 'cause it's in The Big Chill.'
- 'I haven't seen the Big Chill, have I?'
- 'You lying bastard. You saw it in a Lawrence Kasdan double bill with Body Heat.'
- 'Oh, yeah. But I'd forgotten about that, honestly. I wasn't just nicking the idea.'

Actually, I can't think of a more inappropriate song for a funeral than "You can't always get what you want", but in the film it makes sense. Presumably it was one of the gang's favourite songs. I have read that "Angels" as sung by Robbie Williams is the most picked song for British funerals, but that song doesn't speak to me.

As someone who shares more than one character trait with Rob, the protagonist of "High Fidelity", I have devoted in the past no small amount of time in developing a playlist for my father's funeral, which at the time was putative, but something that was definitely going to happen at some time. Rob says in HF "There aren't really any pop songs about death — not good ones, anyway. Maybe that's why I like pop music, and why I find classical music a bit creepy." I don't agree with him at all.

First off, intended for the time when the coffin is lowered into the grave and covered with soil, I am taking a hint from HF but from a different film, Oliver Stone's "Platoon", which uses "Adagio for strings" by Samuel Barber. I don't know whether this was considered to be 'funeral music' before "Platoon" or whether "Platoon" made it 'funeral music', but it is definitely appropriate and chilling. The comments on the YouTube page show that other people think the same. 

One of the most beautiful pieces of classical music that I have ever heard is Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante defunte" (Pavane for a dead princess). There wasn't much music in our house when I was growing up; my parents were fond of swing music (think Glenn Miller) from the days of their youth (which was interrupted by World War 2) and beat music from the sixties didn't find favour with them. It's a shame that they never got to appreciate this classical piece, although I do remember my mother saying at one stage that she liked Debussy's "Clair de lune" (as the Americans would say, "way to go, Mum!"). This will be the first song after the 'service' finishes, when everyone either lines up to commiserate with the grieving family or else starts walking home. I always find the solemnity of the 'service' echoing around my head for some time, and there is no better way than to accompany it with Ravel's Pavane.

There may not be many pop songs about death, but there are plenty of 'art songs' (those that are made to be listened to, not to be danced to) on this topic, especially in Israel. I chose two which coincidentally (or not) were composed by Yoni Rechter: "To die" as sung by Arik Einstein (lyrics by Avraham Halfi) and "Within the storms" as sung by Nurit Galron, who also wrote the words.

In conclusion, I chose "Old man" by Randy Newman, which is both touching and at times somewhat tasteless. Hopefully people will only hear the tune and the sentiment that lies behind it, but not the words.

I wonder whether other people on the kibbutz devote as much thought and time to choosing a 'funeral playlist'.