Lafayette Funeral March 1834 by C. Meineke arranged by Jari Villanueva for modern band.
The Marquis de Lafayette died at age 76 on May 20, 1834 at 6 rue d'Anjou-Saint-Honoré in Paris (now 8 rue d'Anjou in the 8th arrondissement of Paris). He was buried next to his wife at the Picpus Cemetery under soil from Bunker Hill, which his son Georges Washington sprinkled upon him. King Louis-Philippe ordered a military funeral in order to keep the public from attending, and crowds formed to protest their exclusion.
In the United States, President Jackson ordered that Lafayette receive the same memorial honors that had been bestowed on Washington at his death in December 1799. Both Houses of Congress were draped in black bunting for 30 days, and members wore mourning badges. Congress urged Americans to follow similar mourning practices. Later that year, former president John Quincy Adams gave a eulogy of Lafayette that lasted three hours, calling him "high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind".
President Andrew Jackson, in communicating the melancholy news of the death of Lafayette to the Congress of the United States, called it "afflicting intelligence." And so it was. It made more than one Nation mourn, none more than our own. The Marquis de Lafayette was referred to in a General Order to our Army and Navy as "the distinguished friend of the United States"; and the Congress, with rare felicity, added to this the phrase, "the friend of Washington, and the friend of liberty."
America mourned Lafayette with music. In Baltimore Christopher Meineke (1782-1850) wrote a funeral march in his honor.
Meineke left Germany in 1810 and, after spending some time in England, moved to the United States, settling in Baltimore, Maryland, by 1822. He was organist at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore in 1836, likely serving in this position for some eight years.
23 авг 2024