Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [381]
Finally the coffin appeared at the doorway and the thousands removed their hats. The coffin was draped with two huge wreaths, one from Hamburg, the other from the civil administration of Vienna. (Flags flew at half-mast that day in the harbor of Hamburg.) The procession set off past the Karlskirche, led by a standard-bearer in old Spanish costume on a black charger; the funeral car was followed by six more riders carrying lighted tapers on poles and a second mounted standard-bearer. Then came six funeral cars heaped with flowers, laurels, palms, and ribbons. The sun broke out on what looked to Henschel like a gigantic moving garden.50 There followed officials, friends, honored guests including directors of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, professors of the Conservatory, musical ensembles including Marie Soldat’s Women’s Quartet and the Männergesangverein, and deputations from the Hamburg Senate, the Berlin Philharmonic and Hochschule für Musik, the Amsterdam Musikgesellschaft, the Budapest Konservatory, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and many other organizations. Herzog Georg II of Meiningen and his wife Freifrau von Heldburg had sent a colossal wreath that moved slowly along the procession. Marchers included many names from Brahms’s past: Marie Schumann, George Henschel, Frau Johann Strauss, Arthur Fellinger, Karl and Luis Wittgenstein, Josef Hellmesberger, Max Kalbeck, Viktor von Miller zu Aichholz, Artur Faber, Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Antonin Dvořák, Fritz Simrock, Anton Door, Richard Epstein, Eusebius Mandyczewski, Richard Heuberger.
The procession crossed the River Wien to the Musikverein, its entrances and pillars draped in black. There the Singverein that Brahms had once conducted sang his Opus 93 “Farewell,” accompanied by choruses of birds from the Resselpark across the way. The procession continued on past the great bulk of the Hofoper and thousands of onlookers, to a service at the Protestant church on Dorotheërgasse, the throngs listening to the ringing incantation of the minister: “A High Priest in the shrine of true Beauty has entered the Holy of Holies of glory, a mighty Sovereign in the kingdom of tones has laid his scepter aside, a soul full of wondrous melodies has breathed his last sigh, and a noble man has ended his earthly pilgrimage!” Then official Vienna joined as the procession continued to the Grave of Honor in Central Cemetery—a herd of robed magistrates and chancellors and dukes and Landmarschalls, and Dr. Karl Lueger, who was finally about to take his seat as Bürgermeister of the city.
The procession reached the Zentralfriedhof in late afternoon, the day’s chilly wind once more giving way to sun breaking through the clouds. Brahms’s inner circle of friends carried his coffin from the funeral carriage to the grave: Kalbeck, Simrock, Fellinger, Miller, Fuchs, Mandyczewski, Perger, Brüll, Door, Heuberger, Henschel. As Max Kalbeck sobbed noisily, Perger declaimed the final farewell: “Colleagues! It is our true duty to confirm the holy legacy of the Master. Let us solemnly vow in this hour, in this place, steadfastly to hold that legacy together, and struggle to bring it about as he conceived it. His works, now already the property of all art-loving humanity, must through our labor ever more penetrate to ears and hearts!”
Alice Barbi, his last muse, threw the first handful of earth into the grave. It lay in a place Brahms had once called a “sacred spot,” and so his friends knew that was where he wanted to come to rest. The last Master of his line, he lies there in a circle of musicians gathered around a monument to Mozart—beside him Johann Strauss, Jr., at the head of the circle Beethoven and Schubert.
The words at the grave were spoken and forgotten. Brahms had already sung an unforgettable epitaph for himself, for his age, for his vision of music, and for the essential tragedy of humankind: Even the beautiful must die!
Epilogue and Provocation
THE DEATH OF BRAHMS was a watershed in Western musical history—not the end of Vienna’s greatness,