Tom Service on death in classical music

I can hear tubas. Am I about to die?Death. The final frontier. Composers have not been scared to confront it (in their music at least). From Mahler to Wagner, from Mozart to Fauré, they have conjured up visions of the beyond, and the results are anything but morbid. The special, death-haunted radiance of the "farewell" movement from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde is a fine example, as is Mozart's Requiem – and they're among the works to be celebrated at an intriguing musical deathfest this w...

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