threnody

noun

1. A song or poem of lamentation or mourning for a dead person; a dirge; an elegy.

   “The fifer actually knew but one tune "The Bonnie Blue Flag"—and did not know that well. But it was all that he had, and he played it with wearisome monotony for every camp call. . . . I never hated any piece of music as I came to hate that threnody of treason.”

   “[…] in the case of the well-circumstanced narration of the contest at Salamis and of the choral ode, which[…] is, in its panoramic marshalling of the conquests of Darius, a threnody on the ruin of his sea empire.”

   “A strongly personal note runs through Kenneth Leighton's Improvisation (Novello, 35p), which is a threnody in memory of Maurice de Sausmārez. Gently undulating, cantabile lines of ‘mourning’ alternate with sharp, anguished note-clusters which work up to a fierce paroxysm of grief.”