It is one of the best-known epiphanies of the romantic era. Some five years after writing a vast movement for orchestra entitled “Todtenfeier” (Funeral rite), Gustav Mahler decided it should open his Second Symphony. He began work on the middle movements in the summer of 1893 but came to a halt at the finale, uncertain as to how to finish the thing. On February 12, 1894, Mahler’s mentor Hans von Bulow died in Cairo, whither he had gone in hopes that the climate might repair his fragile health. It didn’t, he died, and his body was embalmed and shipped home for the funeral that took place in the Great Michaeliskirche in Hamburg on March 29. Mahler had played the “Todtenfeier” for von Bulow back in 1891, and the sources tell us that the old man had hated it—yet posthumously, he supposedly provided the inspiration for Mahler to complete the work. On February 17, 1897, nearly three years after the funeral, Mahler wrote as follows to the critic Arthur Seidl:

Seidl published Mahler’s letter in 1900, and it has ever since been regarded as a key document in the composer’s biography.

For Mahler to recall a single moment with such precision three years after it happened might seem to confirm the impact that von Bulow’s funeral had made on him, thus underlining the truthfulness of his account.