24 April—The late Pope Francis is no longer lying in state. But we can’t let the subject of lying in state pass without reminding readers that Donald Trump has been lying in state and everywhere else since God knows when. So have his flunkies.

According to John’s Gospel, Jesus told a group of followers (most likely in Aramaic), “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Forget about the biblical context. Because that injunction is clearly understood by Trump and his henchpersons to mean that if they keep lying to the great gullible unwashed they won’t be free. And lack of freedom is what tyranny is all about.

Moving on to better things, then, among Franz Liszt’s brilliant piano works is a ten-piece collection called Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (Poetic and Religious Harmonies). The seventh piece is Funérailles. The word is always used in the plural form in French but simply means funeral.

Liszt wrote Funérailles in October 1849, following the death of his on-again-off-again friend Frédéric Chopin. Liszt insisted that it was meant as a tribute to a trio of Hungarian nobles who had suffered at the hands of the Habsburgs in the failed Hungarian uprising of 1848, including one who was executed just over a week before Chopin died.

But the galloping bass about seven minutes in is reminiscent of the galloping bass in Chopin’s A-flat “Heroic” Polonaise (Op. 53 No. 6), written seven years earlier. So here are the Liszt and Chopin masterpieces: