It received its first performance on 17 January 1909 at the Grand Hall of the St Petersburg Conservatory, in a memorial programme for Rimsky-Korsakov.
"[3] Paul Griffiths commented on Stravinsky's recollections of the work as follows, at a time when the manuscript was still considered to be lost:
Stravinsky's own recollection in the 1930s was of a piece in which "all the solo instruments of the orchestra filed past the tomb of the master in succession, each laying down its own melody as its wreath against a deep background of tremolo murmurings simulating the vibrations of bass..."'[4]In the spring of 2015, Irina Sidorenko, a staff librarian at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, discovered a set of orchestral parts for the work, uncatalogued and untouched for decades, buried amongst many uncatalogued scores.
Braginskaya confirmed the identity of the parts as belonging to the lost Stravinsky work Funeral Song.
[6] The first commercial recording of the work was issued in 2018 by Decca with Riccardo Chailly conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.