Event
Johannes Brahms: A German Requiem
Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45
Brahms's German Requiem is the longest work the composer ever wrote. It
surpasses his symphonies and concertos. (He never wrote an opera). The work established Brahms's reputation internationally.
In spite of the fact that the word Requiem stands as its title, the composition has little connection with the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass with Latin text. Brahms conceived something quite different: a concert work in the Protestant Lutheran tradition with German texts taken entirely from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. He selected and arranged the order of the texts himself with a goal of offering comfort to the bereaved rather than conveying the medieval visions of pain and fear connected with the Last Judgment as depicted by Berlioz, Verdi and Dvorák. Although not an active churchgoer, Brahms was an avid student of the Lutheran (German) Bible. His copy, now preserved in a museum in Vienna, is filled with penciled annotations.
Brahms's mother's death in 1865 is often cited as the stimulus for composing the Requiem because he was working on it after returning from her funeral. However, this point is arguable because he had been working on the piece some time before she died. Three months after his mothers death, he sent two movements to his friend, Clara Schumann. These were the first and fourth movements (Blest are they that mourn, and How lovely is thy dwelling place). In his letter to Clara he also mentions the second movement, (Behold, all flesh is grass). This movement is actually a reworking of a scherzo in a sonata for two pianos in D minor which Clara and Brahms had played together at her home after her husband, Robert's, death. Brahms had written to his friend Joseph Joachim that the German Requiem was also associated with Robert Schumann's death.
By 1866, the German Requiem had six movements. The first three were performed in Vienna by the Society of Friends of Music under the direction of Johann von Herbeck. The results were a disappointment. The chorus did not know the work well enough and the timpanist was over enthusiastic and made so much noise in the third movement that Brahms himself hissed. Brahms's friend, Theodor Billroth, observed in a letter: His Requiem is so nobly spiritual and so Protestant-Bach-like that it was difficult to make it acceptable here [in Catholic Vienna]..
The next performance of the then six-movement work took place in the cathedral in Bremen, Germany, on Good Friday, 10 April 1868. This time things went much better. Brahms supervised the choral rehearsals and conducted the performance himself. The baritone solos were sung by his friend (and frequent performer of his songs), Julius Stockhausen. The audience was a surprise to Brahms. Over 2000 people came, including his father and Clara Schumann, as well as his friends and musicians from all over Europe. The reaction, according to an account written at the
time, was overwhelming, and the performance had to be repeated two weeks later.
After these performances Brahms decided to add a seventh movement to the German Requiem at the suggestion of his former teacher, Eduard Marxsen. This is the movement with the soprano solo that conveys a message of maternal consolation. It was inserted as the fifth movement and the now seven-movement work was first performed in Leipzig, Germany, on 18 February 1869, conducted by Carl Reinecke. After that, performances were heard in every major European city including St. Petersburg, Russia, within a few years.
Brahms commented that he had considered naming the work A Human Requiem. He avoids all mention of Christ in his text selections, although the German word for Lord (Herr) might be taken as a reference to the Messiah of the New Testament. However, the idea of a German Requiem was not new. In 1636 Heinrich Schütz had described his Musikalische Exequien as a Concerto in the form of a German Burial Mass.
Brahms's conception of the forces for his work involved huge proportions: a choir of more than 200 singers with a massive orchestra. However, he also arranged his orchestration for piano accompaniment and wrote another version for piano duet so that the work would be performed widely. In our performances we use a reduced orchestration for chamber orchestra by Joachim Linckelmann. The string parts adhere to the original orchestration as does the timpani part. The original 19 other orchestral instruments are replaced by a woodwind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet,
horn and bassoon). The organ part is from the original orchestration.
Even though the German Requiem was composed over a span of several years, Brahms retains a broad symmetry in the layout of the movements that suggests a kind of mirror structure. The first and last movements have similar texts and share the same key. The second, third and sixth movements are similar in that they all move from images of despair and death to hope and triumph. The middle two movements speak of consolation. The fourth movement also offers relief after the drama of the preceding movements. The sixth movement, the longest in the work, is
the keystone of the structure. It begins with a lament on the transitory nature of life. The baritone soloist plays the role of a prophet, foretelling the future. The stormy middle section is the closest Brahms gets to the terrifying apocalyptic images that dominate so many of the Latin Requiem settings. Confidence is restored with a masterfully crafted fugue in the Handelian tradition.
The last movement returns to the spirit of the opening, emphasizing Brahms's principal message: consolation. Brahms was fond of the image of the closed circle, the balanced form, and it is therefore appropriate that the chorus should sing Blessed are the dead to the theme which in the first movement accompanied the words Blessed are those who mourn.
When Brahms completed the German Requiem, he wrote to a friend, Now I am consoled. I have surmounted obstacles that I thought could never be overcome, and I feel like an eagle, soaring ever higher and higher.
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LocationWatts Hall (View)
174 Main Street
Thomaston, ME 04861
United States
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