EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM
November 2014
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Program Notes by Sanford Dole
Welcome to Bay Choral Guild’s 2014-2015 season! To begin the year we are going big … and small at the same time. After the success of our Mozart program last season I decided that it would be a good idea to add more mainstream works into the programming mix. Although I’ve always loved the large-scale choral-orchestral repertoire, I’ve shied away from considering such pieces for Bay Choral Guild, because a 45-voice chorus is no match for a full orchestra playing modern instruments. In my deliberations for choosing the music for the season I came across some commentary on performing Brahms’s Requiem with piano. It mentioned the fact that Brahms, himself a well-known pianist, created a version for piano four hands intended for performance in a chamber setting. In the mid-19th century it was rare for the average person to hear performances of large orchestra works. Piano reductions were regularly created, often for four hands, and the general public’s first encounter with orchestral music was often on a piano in the home.
In the case of Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) Brahms reworked the entire score, including the choral and solo parts, into the piano. This version was published in 1869 and was used in the work’s first complete British performance. That presentation, in 1871, took place at the fashionable London home of an eminent surgeon, whose wife was one of the pianists. The conductor doubled as the baritone soloist, and the choir numbered about thirty voices. As the piano score contains all of the parts, it can be played alone without any voices and the listener will still hear the entire score. However, in our performance, we will be omitting the parts that merely double the choir and soloists, creating an effect more faithful to the original orchestral source.
The American conductor Richard Sparks, in a recent blog post, echoes my own experience as we’ve gone through the rehearsal process. He writes, “What a great experience to do this version with a small, excellent choir! I still love the full orchestral version and would do it anytime a performance is offered, but the ease of balancing accompaniment with choir, the ability of the choir to sing pure pianos and pianissimos, plus the extra flexibility with rubato made this a great experience.”
In an excellent set of program notes prepared for Seattle’s Choral Arts this past March, writers Gary D. Cannon and George Bozarth have wonderfully distilled the elements of Brahms life that led up to his composing the Requiem. I could not say this any better so I’m including this extended quote:
In the case of Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) Brahms reworked the entire score, including the choral and solo parts, into the piano. This version was published in 1869 and was used in the work’s first complete British performance. That presentation, in 1871, took place at the fashionable London home of an eminent surgeon, whose wife was one of the pianists. The conductor doubled as the baritone soloist, and the choir numbered about thirty voices. As the piano score contains all of the parts, it can be played alone without any voices and the listener will still hear the entire score. However, in our performance, we will be omitting the parts that merely double the choir and soloists, creating an effect more faithful to the original orchestral source.
The American conductor Richard Sparks, in a recent blog post, echoes my own experience as we’ve gone through the rehearsal process. He writes, “What a great experience to do this version with a small, excellent choir! I still love the full orchestral version and would do it anytime a performance is offered, but the ease of balancing accompaniment with choir, the ability of the choir to sing pure pianos and pianissimos, plus the extra flexibility with rubato made this a great experience.”
In an excellent set of program notes prepared for Seattle’s Choral Arts this past March, writers Gary D. Cannon and George Bozarth have wonderfully distilled the elements of Brahms life that led up to his composing the Requiem. I could not say this any better so I’m including this extended quote:
Brahms’s life had been relatively unprepossessing. He was born in 1833 in Hamburg, a port city in northern Germany not noted for its musical establishment. His father would today be classified as a freelance musician, playing frequently at taverns and joining the militia band. The young Brahms studied piano from age seven and eventually began playing professionally in restaurants and theaters (though not seaside brothels, as is commonly believed). In 1853, while touring Germany as the accompanist for an expatriate Hungarian violinist, he met Liszt and the day’s leading violinist, Joseph Joachim. The latter encouraged Brahms to introduce himself to Robert Schumann, which he did in September 1853. The very next month, the master-composer introduced his new young friend to the world.
That February, Schumann suffered a mental breakdown and attempted suicide, leading to his incarceration in an asylum. His wife, Clara, was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest pianists. In order to make ends meet, she reenergized her concertizing throughout Europe. Brahms, having developed a close relationship with the Schumann household, moved in with them to attend to family and business duties. He remained close to Clara, accompanying her on concert trips and spending much time in Düsseldorf, until Robert’s death in July 1856, when he began to perform with greater frequency. Brahms gained seasonal appointments as conductor of the court choir and orchestra at Detmold and an amateur women’s choir in Hamburg. In September 1862 Brahms first visited Vienna, and began to develop a reputation as an important composer of chamber music, piano works, and art songs. The next season he served as conductor of the Vienna Singakademie, with which he programmed Renaissance motets, music by Bach, and earlier nineteenth-century works, showing a refined ear for music of the near and distant past. These early styles were already fundamentally influencing his own choral compositions.
In 1864 Brahms’s father left his wife, a seamstress who was seventeen years his senior. The composer remained on excellent terms with both parents, even helping to secure his father a position with the Hamburg Philharmonic. When his mother died in February 1865, Brahms was deeply stricken. He soon after began composing his Requiem, a major work for baritone soloist, mixed chorus, and large orchestra. His feelings about the death of his mother certainly mingled with his memories of the death of his friend and inspiration Robert Schumann; indeed, Brahms even resurrected materials he had initially composed in 1854, the year of Schumann’s breakdown. With rapidity remarkable for a composer so plagued by self-criticism, Brahms completed a six-movement work of about an hour’s duration by summer 1866.
The first three movements were performed in Vienna on December 1, 1867, to mixed reaction. The six-movement work waited for its premiere until April 10, 1868 (Good Friday), at the cathedral in Bremen. This performance was a rousing success, but the Requiem’s story was not over yet. The following month, Brahms appended what is now the fifth movement, with soprano solo. (Legend avers that he composed this movement soon after visiting his mother’s gravesite.) The work received its first truly complete performance on February 18, 1869 at the famed Gewandhaus in Leipzig, where it was a decided failure. (The first performance of the First Piano Concerto in Leipzig in 1859 was also a flop). But the Bremen performance had achieved such renown throughout Europe that the work’s fame was secure. Here was Brahms’s first glimpse of major accomplishment. The Requiem pre-dates all the symphonies, most of the concertos, and the many shorter works for chorus and orchestra. Schumann’s 1853 article had encouraged Brahms to “direct his magic wand where the massed forces of chorus and orchestra may lend him their power.” Schumann was right. It was this Requiem that confirmed his pronouncement that Brahms would someday become the most prominent composer of his generation.”
The Requiem, considered to be Brahms’s greatest choral work, appeared at the midpoint of his life. Although he was already an established composer, this piece represented a breakthrough that cemented his fame, although not without some controversy. This is in part due to the Protestant nature of the text. Brahms was agnostic, and in today’s terminology may have been considered a “secular humanist.” But he was intimately familiar with scripture. The libretto is not taken from the traditional Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Rather, Brahms compiled the text himself from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible. The title refers simply to the fact that it is in German. Brahms later wrote that he expressed regret for the title saying, “I will admit that I could happily omit the ‘German’ and simply say ‘Human’ (or for ‘Mankind’).”
It is interesting to note that there are no references to Christ. (This caused a problem at the premiere. A solution was finally worked out to allow an alto soloist to sing “I know that my redeemer liveth” from Handel’s Messiahbetween the third movement and intermission.) Instead Brahms chose verses from various books of the Bible that focus on comforting the living rather than praying for or grieving for the departed.
The theme of the opening movement is consolation. After a low pulsing note the main harmonic phrase unfolds with a gentleness and somber beauty that sets the tone for the entire work. The moment builds toward a climax as the chorus sings “They shall be comforted,” before subsiding to a peaceful stillness.
The second movement begins with a heavy, funereal march sung in unison by the lower voices. A more lilting section offers a contrast, with the text describing the patience of a farmer waiting for his crops to ripen. The funeral march returns, suggesting all-consuming anguish. But midway through the movement, the mood changes abruptly to more optimistic text and music. The basses introduce a lively, syncopated passage, proclaiming “The redeemed of the Lord shall return again, and come rejoicing unto Zion.” In a wonderful moment of counterpoint, with the tenors singing the same figure as the sopranos, but half as fast, they exclaim, “Joy and gladness shall be theirs, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” The movement ends serenely on the words “eternal joy.”
The third movement marks the first appearance of text written in the first person, and appropriately enough, this very personal text is also the first presented by a soloist. The chorus and baritone exchange despairing words on the shortness of life. But just when they seem to have given up all hope, the clouds part with a brief ecstatic passage, “My hope is in thee”, which leads into the first of the work’s two large-scale fugues. This one contains one of the most brilliant uses of pedal point that I have ever encountered. Listen to the bass notes in the piano—for the entirety of the fugue’s 36 measures a low D sounds. As the music unfolds above it, that D remains ever present and always relates harmonically to whatever chords are sounding.
The next two movements constitute an interlude of sorts. First the chorus sings a sublime folk song, intoning over and over, “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts.” This movement is often performed as a standalone piece and is how many people first encounter the Requiem. Then, in the fifth movement, the solo soprano’s central words evoke the assurance of hope (and the memory of Brahms’s mother): “I will console you, as one is consoled by his mother.”
Darker colors return in the sixth movement, which begins with a solemn processional. The baritone soloist enters with words of hope, familiar to many from their use in the Part III of Handel’s Messiah, “Behold, I tell you a mystery….” The tumultuous section that follows is the closest that Brahms comes to the fire-and-brimstone theatrics of the typical Latin Requiem’s Dies Irae. But Brahms’s image of the last judgment is one of resurrection, not terror: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” This leads to the great climax of the entire Requiem, another massive fugue, even grander than the one from the third movement.
The music of the final movement is full and rich, but not showy, echoing the sweetness of the first movement. The end of this movement recalls the beginning of the entire work, quoting the musical passage that brings that movement (also Selig sind) to its gentle conclusion. It is as if Brahms is asking us to approach the inevitable with peaceful resignation and calm acceptance. Or as one commentator puts it, “the music dies away on its opening word, selig, ‘blessed’—the dead blessed not in Paradise but in the hearts of the living.”
Musically the score displays Brahms technical mastery. His study of Bach is evident in the brilliant fugues that conclude the third and sixth movements. His understanding of form (evident in the text as well as the music) brings weight and a satisfying balance to each movement. The work displays a certain amount of symmetry about its center. The first and last movements are both slow and serene, both starting with the text Selig sind. Movements 2 and 6 are perhaps the most dramatic ones; movements 3 and 5 begin with a soloist.
There are musical elements to listen for as well. At the first entrance of the chorus an important motive is introduced by the sopranos: an ascending major third followed by a half step. These three simple notes—first heard as F, A, B-flat —become a musical building block that informs key moments throughout the work. In the conclusion of the third movement the fugue subject, first heard in the tenor part, begins with the notes D, F#, G—a major third followed by a half step. The soprano melody in the beloved fourth movement begins E-flat, G, A-flat—again a major third followed by a half step. Perhaps less obvious, but no less ingenious and connected to this motivic thread running throughout the work is the opening of the fugue subject in the sixth movement. Introduced by the altos, the first three notes we hear are C, B, G. These intervals, a descending half step followed by a descending major third, constitute the opening motive in reverse order, the compositional technique known as retrograde.
Interestingly, the soloists do not sing free-standing arias, as was typical in the oratorios of the Baroque era that preceded Brahms. Rather, the soloists are incorporated into the choral texture. In the movement that was added after the premiere, the soprano acts as the deceased on high offering consolation to the one living down on earth. In the third and sixth movements we hear a line of text exclaimed by the baritone soloist, which is then taken up and expanded upon by the chorus.
In part because the soloists do not sing entire movements on their own this work is a real tour-de-force for the chorus. One of the most technically challenging moments for the chorus occurs at the beginning of the last movement. After having sung continually for over an hour, most notably high and loud during the sixth movement, the sopranos then begin the seventh movement on a soft, floating, extended high F. This is asking a lot from choristers! But the ethereal quality of this passage invites us to bask in this life. For Brahms, joy—the word Freudeis heard throughout the work—is the ultimate experience. It is that joy that all people hope for on the other side of mourning.
It is interesting to note that there are no references to Christ. (This caused a problem at the premiere. A solution was finally worked out to allow an alto soloist to sing “I know that my redeemer liveth” from Handel’s Messiahbetween the third movement and intermission.) Instead Brahms chose verses from various books of the Bible that focus on comforting the living rather than praying for or grieving for the departed.
The theme of the opening movement is consolation. After a low pulsing note the main harmonic phrase unfolds with a gentleness and somber beauty that sets the tone for the entire work. The moment builds toward a climax as the chorus sings “They shall be comforted,” before subsiding to a peaceful stillness.
The second movement begins with a heavy, funereal march sung in unison by the lower voices. A more lilting section offers a contrast, with the text describing the patience of a farmer waiting for his crops to ripen. The funeral march returns, suggesting all-consuming anguish. But midway through the movement, the mood changes abruptly to more optimistic text and music. The basses introduce a lively, syncopated passage, proclaiming “The redeemed of the Lord shall return again, and come rejoicing unto Zion.” In a wonderful moment of counterpoint, with the tenors singing the same figure as the sopranos, but half as fast, they exclaim, “Joy and gladness shall be theirs, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” The movement ends serenely on the words “eternal joy.”
The third movement marks the first appearance of text written in the first person, and appropriately enough, this very personal text is also the first presented by a soloist. The chorus and baritone exchange despairing words on the shortness of life. But just when they seem to have given up all hope, the clouds part with a brief ecstatic passage, “My hope is in thee”, which leads into the first of the work’s two large-scale fugues. This one contains one of the most brilliant uses of pedal point that I have ever encountered. Listen to the bass notes in the piano—for the entirety of the fugue’s 36 measures a low D sounds. As the music unfolds above it, that D remains ever present and always relates harmonically to whatever chords are sounding.
The next two movements constitute an interlude of sorts. First the chorus sings a sublime folk song, intoning over and over, “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts.” This movement is often performed as a standalone piece and is how many people first encounter the Requiem. Then, in the fifth movement, the solo soprano’s central words evoke the assurance of hope (and the memory of Brahms’s mother): “I will console you, as one is consoled by his mother.”
Darker colors return in the sixth movement, which begins with a solemn processional. The baritone soloist enters with words of hope, familiar to many from their use in the Part III of Handel’s Messiah, “Behold, I tell you a mystery….” The tumultuous section that follows is the closest that Brahms comes to the fire-and-brimstone theatrics of the typical Latin Requiem’s Dies Irae. But Brahms’s image of the last judgment is one of resurrection, not terror: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” This leads to the great climax of the entire Requiem, another massive fugue, even grander than the one from the third movement.
The music of the final movement is full and rich, but not showy, echoing the sweetness of the first movement. The end of this movement recalls the beginning of the entire work, quoting the musical passage that brings that movement (also Selig sind) to its gentle conclusion. It is as if Brahms is asking us to approach the inevitable with peaceful resignation and calm acceptance. Or as one commentator puts it, “the music dies away on its opening word, selig, ‘blessed’—the dead blessed not in Paradise but in the hearts of the living.”
Musically the score displays Brahms technical mastery. His study of Bach is evident in the brilliant fugues that conclude the third and sixth movements. His understanding of form (evident in the text as well as the music) brings weight and a satisfying balance to each movement. The work displays a certain amount of symmetry about its center. The first and last movements are both slow and serene, both starting with the text Selig sind. Movements 2 and 6 are perhaps the most dramatic ones; movements 3 and 5 begin with a soloist.
There are musical elements to listen for as well. At the first entrance of the chorus an important motive is introduced by the sopranos: an ascending major third followed by a half step. These three simple notes—first heard as F, A, B-flat —become a musical building block that informs key moments throughout the work. In the conclusion of the third movement the fugue subject, first heard in the tenor part, begins with the notes D, F#, G—a major third followed by a half step. The soprano melody in the beloved fourth movement begins E-flat, G, A-flat—again a major third followed by a half step. Perhaps less obvious, but no less ingenious and connected to this motivic thread running throughout the work is the opening of the fugue subject in the sixth movement. Introduced by the altos, the first three notes we hear are C, B, G. These intervals, a descending half step followed by a descending major third, constitute the opening motive in reverse order, the compositional technique known as retrograde.
Interestingly, the soloists do not sing free-standing arias, as was typical in the oratorios of the Baroque era that preceded Brahms. Rather, the soloists are incorporated into the choral texture. In the movement that was added after the premiere, the soprano acts as the deceased on high offering consolation to the one living down on earth. In the third and sixth movements we hear a line of text exclaimed by the baritone soloist, which is then taken up and expanded upon by the chorus.
In part because the soloists do not sing entire movements on their own this work is a real tour-de-force for the chorus. One of the most technically challenging moments for the chorus occurs at the beginning of the last movement. After having sung continually for over an hour, most notably high and loud during the sixth movement, the sopranos then begin the seventh movement on a soft, floating, extended high F. This is asking a lot from choristers! But the ethereal quality of this passage invites us to bask in this life. For Brahms, joy—the word Freudeis heard throughout the work—is the ultimate experience. It is that joy that all people hope for on the other side of mourning.
