Funeral March of a Marionette: the theme in Tonic Solfa
Funeral March of a Marionette, the theme, in Tonic Solfa (doh is F): the solfa, staff notation and a piano to sing along with.
Download the solfa (PDF)A4, free to print and share with your choir
- Key
- D minor
- Doh
- F
- Time
- 6/8
- Starts on
- l, (D)
- Range
- fe, to t (C♭ to E)
- Also called
- Marche funèbre d'une marionnette
Tune Funeral March of a Marionette by Charles Francois Gounod (1818–1893). Sources and licences.
The solfa
| __l,l,se,fe, | se,_l,t,__ | __l,l,se,fe, | se,_l,t,__ |
| __dm-r | d_ms-f | m_st-l | sefmrdt, |
| __l,l,se,fe, | se,_l,t,__ | ___m-- | ---r-- |
| d_ms-f | mrdta,rf | l,se,l,t,_d | t,--l, |
The solfa line by line
The same solfa as plain text, easy to copy into your own notes or a WhatsApp message to the choir. To print it, download the solfa as a PDF.
Doh is F · 6/8
Staff notation
The melody on the treble staff in D minor.
The staff is drawn here when you scroll to it.
About the tune
Charles Gounod wrote the Funeral March of a Marionette for piano in 1872 as a joke in music: a troupe of puppets carry a broken friend to the cemetery, stop at a tavern on the way and hurry back into step. He scored it for orchestra in 1879, and it is best known today as the theme of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
This is the march's main tune, its first sixteen bars, read from Lemoine's illustrated edition of the piano score (Paris, 1882), with the rests as the score has them. Where the piano splits into two voices (the eleventh and twelfth bars) the tune follows the top one, a held A falling to G, while the march figure goes on underneath. The grace notes are left out.
- Music (1872): Charles Francois Gounod (1818–1893)
New to solfa? Read how to read Tonic Solfa and how to find the doh of a song.
Questions about Funeral March of a Marionette
What is the doh of Funeral March of a Marionette?
In this version, in D minor, doh is F. If your choir sings it in another key, doh moves to the new key note and every solfa syllable stays the same — that is what movable doh means.
What note does Funeral March of a Marionette start on?
It starts on l, (D in D minor). Find doh first, then sing up or down to l,.
Is Funeral March of a Marionette in the public domain?
Yes. Charles Francois Gounod died in 1893; the tune was first published in 1873. Everyone named died before 1955 and it was published before 1929, so the tune is out of copyright in Nigeria, the UK, the EU and the United States. Modern arrangements of it can still be under copyright.