Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80

• Brahms wrote his Akademische Festouverture, Op. 80, in 1880 for the University of Breslau.¹
• The overture was first performed on January 4, 1881, on the occasion of Brahms’s reception of an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau.² (This institution is now the University of Wrocław in Poland.)³ Brahms conducted this performance.⁴
• The overture is based on several popular melodies and student songs, including an adaptation of the Rakóczy March, and “Gaudeamus ignitur”.⁵

“A very boisterous potpourri of student songs.”

Brahms, on the Academic Festival Overture⁶

1.  George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 17, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051879.
2. Ibid.
3.  Betsy Schwarm, “Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80,” Encyclopædia Britannica (March 15, 2016), accessed February 18, 2021), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Academic-Festival-Overture-Op-80. 
4.  Kathy Henkel, “Academic Festival Overture,” LA Philharmonic, accessed February 18, 2021, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/166/academic-festival-overture. 
5. Ibid.
6. Quoted in Ibid.