Funeral
The funeral arrangements were made by Mozart's friend and patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Describing his funeral, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states, "Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the city on 7 December." Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present.
The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild."
The common belief that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave is also without foundation. The "common grave" referred to above is a term for a grave belonging to a citizen not of the aristocracy. It was an individual grave, not a communal grave; but after ten years the city had the right to dig it up and use it for a later burial. The graves of the aristocracy were spared such treatment.
Read more about this topic: Death Of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Famous quotes containing the word funeral:
“You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,
Through funeral parlors and honky-tonks.
From river to river you comb the town
For a place to lay your family down.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble
At a funeral mass, the skunk’s tail
Paraded the skunk.”
—Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)
“Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)