Music: Death Music

If Pianist Josef Hofmann lay dying in his home on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, and were able to choose music to accompany his passing, if Retired Fisticuffer James Joseph ("Gene") Tunney were similarly stricken and privileged, both men would ask to hear the surging Funeral March from Wagner's Götterdämmerung.

Disregarding the fact that few dying men have strength or inclination to call for music, playing on the sentiment that the ideal exit would be made to the strains of some great composer, The Etude, music magazine whose appeal is usually more pedagogic than popular, last...