Death, Nostalgia and Tradition: Narratives of Brahms's Funeral from Vienna to Budapest

Abstract In the afternoon of April 6, 1897, a large crowd gathered in Vienna to bid Johannes Brahms a final farewell. The contemporary reports not only describe the funeral procession, but also tell us about the music that was played at the prestigious event. They mention Brahms's choral piece Fahr wohl , the chorale Jesus , meine Zuversicht, Mendelssohn's Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rat , and Schubert's – or, in some accounts, Carl Gottlieb Reissiger's – setting of Goethe's first Wandrers Nachtlied (Der du von dem Himmel bist) . In my paper, I follow the route of the procession to discover the stories behind the symbolic details of the funeral and the music performed as part of the service. I believe these unfolding narratives offer a great chance to take a closer look at both the prevailing images of Brahms and the cultural milieu of Vienna and Central Europe at the fin-de-siècle. In the second part of my study, I focus a little further east in Central Europe, to Budapest, and illustrate how the news of Brahms's death gave the opportunity to the Hungarian newspapers to publish their own stories of the composer and to reflect on current issues in the musical scene.