It was not only by his illustrious host that the composer came to be loved. He made himself a favourite with everyone in the Duke's service with whom he came in contact; his visits to Meiningen and Altenstein Castles were regarded by the entire household as a distinction and pleasure, and the harmless jokes and playful sayings in which he continued to find a childlike satisfaction to the end of his life are remembered by these friends with affection and regret. The concert at Zürich on December 6, the programme of which included the first performance of 'Nänie,' made an extraordinary impression, and was so brilliantly successful financially that, in the words of Steiner, 'the committee could not rest satisfied without giving visible and lasting expression to their feelings of gratitude and veneration towards the author of such glorious achievements.' It took the form of a silver cup, designed for the occasion by Bosshard of Lucerne, and was forwarded to the master on its completion. Brahms wrote his thanks to Hegar in the following words: 'MOST ESTEEMED FRIEND, 'Your goblet has arrived, and the étui containing the musical silver angel glitters like an open altar shrine upon the piano. You cannot think how beautiful and kind it stands there, and with what pleasure I look at it! 'But now, please, use your best words to assure your esteemed fellow members of the great pleasure they have given me and how grateful I am for their kindness. You can easily supply details which I am shy of adding and which, if written, might sound trivial and vain. You, however, are aware that such a friendly token of appreciation and sympathy is a very serious matter.... 'Now, with hearty greeting to you and yours, 'Yours most sincerely, 'J. BRAHMS.'[66] In his setting of 'Nänie,' dedicated to Frau Henriette Feuerbach and performed from the manuscript at this concert, Brahms has conceived the calm fatalistic spirit of classical antiquity represented in Schiller's funeral dirge as perfectly as he has embodied in the music of the German Requiem the passionate intensity of the writers of the Old and New Testaments. A current of tender pathos glides evenly through the lament, which is somewhat strengthened during the passing image of Aphrodite bewailing the loss of her son, but not sufficiently to disturb the smooth onward flow of the passages proceeding continuously from beginning to end of the work. It seems to suggest the ancient Greek idea of death as the final decree of destiny, hardly to be dreaded, not to be questioned or resisted, immutable even in the presence of beauty, just as clearly as the powerful contrasts of the Requiem present the Biblical conception of death as an enemy to be opposed and finally destroyed in the victory of an all-conquering love.