SUMMARY
This doctoral dissertation provides an insight into funeral music as an ethnomusicological, anthropological, economic and cultural phenomenon, which has so far in Slovenia not attracted appropriate scholarly attention. It focuses on the role and importance of music at funerals in the context of the symbolism associated with death, departure and the concept of transience, and on the causes of different choices of music as an integral part of the leave–taking of the deceased, in conjunction with aspects of historical, social and cultural diversity.