Funeral Blues
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"Funeral Blues" or "Stop all the clocks" is a poem by W. H. Auden, first published in its final, familiar form in 1938, but based on an earlier version published in 1936.
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[edit] Titles and versions
The first, and less widely-known, version of the poem, written and published in 1936, has five stanzas; the 1938 final version has four stanzas. Only the first two stanzas are the same in both versions. The 1936 five-stanza version was a satiric poem of mourning for a political leader, written for the verse play The Ascent of F6, by Auden and Christopher Isherwood. The 1938 four-stanza version was written to be sung by the soprano Hedli Anderson, in a setting by Benjamin Britten. This version was first published in an anthology The Year's Poetry, 1938, compiled by Denys Kilham Roberts and Geoffrey Grigson (London, 1938); Auden then included it in his book Another Time (New York, 1940) as one of four poems headed "Four Cabaret Songs for Miss Hedli Anderson"; the poem itself was titled "Funeral Blues" in this edition. (Auden never gave the poem any other title.) The text in the British edition of Another Time has a misprint, showing "woods" for the correct reading "wood"; this error does not occur in any other edition.
In Auden's Collected Poetry (1945) the poem is poem XXX in the section "Songs and Other Musical Pieces". In his Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (1966) the poem is poem IX in the section "Twelve Songs" in Part II, "1933-1938"; the same numbering appears in his posthumous Collected Poems (1976, 1991, 2007).
[edit] Appearances
- The poem was given a setting for chorus and instrumental group by Benjamin Britten as part of his incidental music for the first production of The Ascent of F6 in 1937, and later arranged for solo voice and piano in a collection of settings of Auden poems under the title Cabaret Songs.
- "Funeral Blues" was the poem read by Matthew (John Hannah) at the funeral of his partner Gareth (Simon Callow) in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
- It is the English contribution to the statue commemorating the Heysel Stadium disaster (Belgium), where a retaining wall collapsed, and resulted in 39 deaths on May 29, 1985 when Liverpool FC (England) played Juventus FC (Italy) in the European Cup final (now Champions League).
- "Funeral Blues" is the first song on the Munly album Galvanized Yankee (1999).
- Bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Victor Krummenacher recorded a musical arrangement of the poem in a blues style. "Funeral Blues" appears on his album "Patriarch's Blues" (Magnetic Records, October 2008).
- Rock group U2 uses a computerized voice to recite a snippet of the poem, during the encore break on their ongoing 360 Tour.[1]
[edit] Copyright status
The text is copyrighted by the Estate of W.H. Auden.[2]
According to The W. H. Auden Society, only Random House, Faber & Faber, and Curtis Brown Ltd. can give permission to reprint the text.[3]
