From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A lament or lamentation is a song or poem expressing grief, regret or mourning. Many of the oldest and most lasting poems in human history have been laments. Laments are present in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, in Beowulf, in the Hindu Vedas, and in ancient Near Eastern religious texts, including the Mesopotamian city laments such as the Lament for Ur and the Jewish Tanakh (or Old Testament). In many oral traditions, both early and modern, the lament has been a genre usually performed by women.

In the traditional music of Scotland, a lament is also a genre of musical composition for the bagpipes. In Scots Gaelic, these pieces are often called pìobaireachd or pibroch (an Anglicised spelling representing the pronunciation). In form, these slow pieces are a theme and variations, beginning with a slow air (called the urlar) which is played with variations and embellishments; the simple melody returns to finish the piece. These pieces are usually named after a person; traditionally, the person for whom they were composed was a warrior slain in battle.

The traditional lament played at Commonwealth services of remembrance is a solo bagpipe version of Flowers of the Forest.

A lament in music is a piece featuring a basso ostinato. Its repeating bass theme contains a descending, typically chromatic figure (often descending from tonic to dominant) in slow triple meter. A good example of this is Henry Purcell's 'When I am laid in earth'.

• Planctus, a Latin form
• Complainte, a French form
• Genre of the Lamentations
• Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet
• Book of Lamentations

• Margaret Alexiou, The ritual lament in Greek tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
• Mohsen Farsani. Lamentations chez les nomades bakhtiari d'Iran, Paris. 2003.
• H. Munro Chadwick, Nora Kershaw Chadwick, The growth of literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932-40), e.g. vol. 2 p. 229.
• Andrew Dalby, Rediscovering Homer (New York: Norton, 2006. ISBN 0393057887) pp. 141-143.
• Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous voices: women's laments and Greek literature. London: Routledge, 1992. ISBN 0415121655.
• Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms. Westminster: John Knox Press, 1981. ISBN 0804217920.