In this situation, with the following explanation, I think we can stay close to the original. I would avoid morbid because it usually has a narrower meaning in English.

Since morbid in English generally means either sickly or unwholesome or brooding on death, it does not really convey the same as the Fr. I think it means some akin to very solemn, facing death, thoughts of death, so suggest these two terms which I don't think need to be reduced to their literal meaning, but convey the atmosphere of contemplating death and all that that encompasses. So not sure they are ideal but I feel they are closer to the intent of the Fr.

After this performance, another man borrowed the tenor player’s horn, and joined Rudd and Tchicai. His remarkably broad sound bristled with overtones, and his melodies moved from a groaning, funereal lyricism to jaunty, anthem-like marches. The group fell into a joyous New Orleans polyphony (aided by Rudd’s Dixieland experience), but the effect was of the 1941 Ellington band in full flight--Rudd the whole trombone section, Tchicai the trumpets, and the tenorman capturing perfectly the overtone-rich sound of the Ellington reeds.
http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=45890&s...

Having opened with music by Knussen himself – rarefied, graphic, lyrically entrancing and scintillating – the programme was notable for an early revival of George Benjamin’s Dance Figures (2004), which was given its UK premiere at BBC Proms 2006 conducted by David Robertson. Conceived as both a work for choreography and for the concert-hall, Dance Figures (first heard in Chicago conducted by Daniel Barenboim), whether in wisps of sound, pungent sonorities, hard-edged rhythmic bite (not unlike some of the wilder of Pierre Boulez’s Notations that he is bit-by-bit orchestrating) or richly sepulchral lyricism, is a compelling work of inviting invention and orchestral mastery (as Knussen’s ‘Higglety Pigglety’ compilation also is), one full of contrast and variety in which the nine sections add up to a related whole in which even the notated silence between numbers 6 and 7, especially when Knussen maintained tension through it (conducting it as if sound) intensified continuity rather than emphasising the composer’s description of Dance Figures as being in two parts.
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review....

The east London ex-Fun- Da-Mental frontman has moved to West Auckland - hardly the obvious place from which to continue to lead his dark crusade. But Nadeem Shafi's sepulchral lyricism and brooding Massive- style beats combine to create what could be New Zealand's most polished and accomplished album for 2010. iPod essential: Zero - James Belfield
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/sunday-star-times-we...