This paper will examine the Funeral March of the “Eroica” in terms of both its tonal structure and narrative meaning. Through the use of voice-leading graphs, it will offer a interpretation of the movement which differs significantly from Schenker’s comprehensive study in Das Meisterwerk in der Musik. It will show that the tonicization of the subdominant is an important feature of both the March and Trio sections, and that this idea achieves its most elaborate realization in the climactic F minor fugue. Also to be discussed are the significance of the return of the opening theme in G minor (bars 154 ff) and the dramatic A-flat passage (bars 159 ff) which leads back to the recapitulation of the opening theme in the tonic. By considering the movement’s large-scale formal design, the paper will propose a new interpretation of the movement’s narrative, interrogating the programmatic ideas so long ingrained in its reception. Rather than an expression of grief for an individual hero, the Funeral March is a meditation on death itself. To recall Beethoven’s own subtitle of the “Pastorale” Symphony, the program of the “Eroica” is “mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei.”