Biography

Brahms’s family was perhaps not the most usual one.  His mother Johanna was 44 when he was born; his father Johann was 27.  And yes, they named him Johannes.  (The name situation is not quite as weird as it may seem; evidently Mama Brahms went by one of her middle names, Christiane). Brahms’s musician father played flute, horn, violin, and double bass in dance halls, taverns, a military band, and eventually the Hamburg Philharmonic (Brahms was responsible for his father’s position in that ensemble).  Despite the family’s lack of money and their frequent moves, Brahms had a good general education and studied music (piano, horn, cello) from an early age, soon receiving free lessons in piano and music theory from a local composer.  As a young man he earned money as a piano teacher, a performer, and music arranger—though contrary to received wisdom, he did not play in seaside taverns as a boy. 

Brahms’s real professional life began in 1853.  In that year he toured northern Germany as accompanist to Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and met the famous violinist Joseph Joachim (ultimately the dedicatee of Brahms’s Violin Concerto), Liszt, and Berlioz.  He also met Clara and Robert Schumann, who played hugely important roles in his life.  Writing in the important journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1853, Robert Schumann hailed the twenty-year-old Brahms as the successor to Beethoven (a premise so daunting that it took Brahms until 1876, when he was 43, to complete his first symphony).  The article praising the younger musician helped launch his career. 

The following year Schumann suffered a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide, and was confined to a sanatorium where he remained until his death in 1856.  Brahms then moved to Düsseldorf, where the Schumanns lived, to help Clara in the chaos that followed Robert’s breakdown.  And he rapidly fell in love with Clara.

Fourteen years older than Brahms, Clara Schumann was the original superwoman.  An internationally renowned pianist, one of the first to perform from memory, she was also a composer.  Want to hear something gorgeous?  Listen to her song Liebst du um Schönheit, yes, the same text Mahler set later.  Wife and helpmeet to Robert, she bore eight (!) children (one died as an infant), supporting them as well as her grandchildren after Robert’s death through a resumption of her concert career.  Today a concert pianist “only” has to be a virtuoso; in Clara’s day, the soloist also had to rent the hall, arrange for publicity, have the programs printed, and so on.  So she was a little busy.  She regularly performed Brahms’s music in her concerts, again furthering the recognition of his work.  Brahms eventually got over his romantic feelings for Clara and managed to fall in love with various other women, including one of Clara’s daughters (the Alto Rhapsody was his wedding gift to her).  Still, Brahms and Clara remained extremely close for the rest of their lives.  He sought and valued her opinion of his compositions, dedicated works to her, and depicted her in music (e.g. the Adagio of the first piano concerto).  Brahms’s last vocal composition, the Vier ernste Gesänge Op. 121 (Four Serious Songs, to biblical texts) was written on the approach of Clara’s death (she passed away in May 1896). 

In the fall of 1857 Brahms took on a three-month position at the court of Detmold where he played and taught piano and directed the (amateur) choral society; he returned to that position in fall 1858 and 1859.  In Hamburg in 1859 he founded an amateur women’s chorus, which he directed for three years.  Another choral gig turned up in Vienna in 1863–1864, when he was director of the Vienna Singakademie.  Concerts for the last included music by Bach and Renaissance composers alongside works of his own and other nineteenth-century composers.  His final conducting position was with Vienna’s famed Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, where he was responsible for both orchestra and chorus from 1872 to 1875.  Again he explored a wide and unusual repertoire, going as far back as the work of Heinrich Isaac (d. 1517).  Not everyone shared his musical tastes; the choir at first did not like the pieces Brahms foisted on them. 

Brahms had first visited Vienna in 1862, where, partly owing to introductions by Clara Schumann, he rapidly became part of the musical elite in that intensely musical city.  He eventually settled there permanently, but often spent summers composing in bucolic surroundings (e.g. in the Black Forest near Clara Schumann).  For financial purposes, he also undertook various lengthy concert tours, both as a soloist (playing a very wide repertoire, including works by Baroque composers such as Couperin, Rameau, and Scarlatti) and as an accompanist to Joachim and the baritone Julius Stockhausen.  With the latter he played an important role in complete performances of song cycles by Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven; previous musicians had performed selections only. 

Eventually Brahms achieved financial stability and was able to concentrate on composing and his other musical interests.  He was involved in editions of Couperin, W.F. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, and Chopin; edited all nine Schubert symphonies; prepared the Mozart Requiem (anonymously) for the Mozart collected works edition; and assisted Clara Schumann in the lengthy task of editing her husband’s music.  He arranged much music for two pianos or piano four hands; before the advent of recording (and back when the well-to-do might have two pianos in their homes), this was a major way of disseminating music. 

He was also an assiduous music collector of folk music, Renaissance and Baroque music, and musical autographs.  He owned the original manuscripts of Haydn’s Op. 20 quartets, Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, Schumann’s fourth symphony, works by Schubert, Berlioz, and Chopin, excepts from both Tristan and Rheingold, and a good number of Beethoven sketches.  After his death in 1897, most of this went to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.

Ein deutsches Requiem

Dennis Shrock, in his Choral Monuments (p. 282), nicely summarizes the multiple factors that lay behind the creation of Brahms’s Requiem: “The impetus...resulted from a mixture of circumstances, including his knowledge and admiration of choral works by Schütz, Bach, and other historic master composers; the death of his mentor, Robert Schumann; Schumann’s stated desire for Brahms to write a choral/orchestral work; Schumann’s unfulfilled plans to write a German Requiem; the experiences Brahms had conducting choirs in Winsen, Detmold, Hamburg, and Vienna; and the death of his mother.”  Despite the fact that Brahms drew some of the material for Mvt. 2 from a work begun in 1854 after Schumann’s suicide attempt, it was surely his mother’s death on 2 February 1865 that set serious composition of the Requiem in motion. 

Not being Catholic, Brahms had no particular interest in writing a Latin Requiem mass in the mold of Mozart or (heaven forbid!) Berlioz.  Instead, he followed the centuries-old tradition of creating mourning works in German, a lineage that includes Schütz’s Musikalisches Exequien and Bach’s Cantata 106.  According to Shrock, at the time of the Requiem’s composition Brahms had also been conducting various works that dealt with death anyway, such as Bach’s Cantata 4 and Schumann’s Requiem for Mignon.

Although not overtly religious, Brahms knew the Bible intimately; he owned two copies of the Lutheran Bible as well as three additional New Testaments.  He chose his own texts from both the Old and the New Testaments.  They deal with the transitory nature of life and the consolation of the living rather than concern for the dead in the Catholic tradition—no fire and brimstone here!  Brahms also avoided any specific mention of Christ.  The title “Ein deutsches Requiem” (a German Requiem) refers simply to the language of the texts, although Brahms himself indicated that he would gladly give up the “German” part and just call it “human.” 

Several of the texts Brahms set were also used by Schütz.  From the Musikalisches Exequien we have “Der gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand und keine Qual rühret sie an” (Brahms Mvt. 3); from the 1648 Geistliche Chormusik we have both “Selig sind die Toten” (Mvt. 7) and “Die mit Tränen säen” (Mvt. 1); and from the 1619 Psalmen Davids there is “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (Mvt. 4). 

Brahms’s unique choice of texts and the structure of his work have created some generic confusion for the Requiem.  Unger (Historical Dictionary of Choral Music) calls it an oratorio; Ahlquist (Chorus and Community) says that it is sui generis.  For most of us it is simply “the Brahms Requiem.” 

In April 1865, not long after composition commenced, Brahms sent Mvt. 4 to Clara Schumann, calling it “the weakest part” of the piece (an amusing statement to us today, but it is certainly the most straightforward of the movements).  Even more amusing is that Clara, though appreciating the movement in general, wasn’t crazy about the “die loben dich immerdar” section (beginning with the pick-up to m. 124) with its reiterated motives, saying that it “goes on and on.”  Well, there is a lot of repetition therein. 

On 30 December 1866 Clara was sent a complete vocal score, and the hunt was on for a performance.  The (partial) premiere took place on 1 December 1867 at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.  Here the piece was given in Schubert’s memory, on a program that also included music from that composer’s Rosamunde.  Only the first three movements were performed, and the third movement presented problems.  The timpanist misread the dynamic indication for the concluding fugue and pounded away on the D pedal point so that the famous critic Hanslick “experienced the sensations of a passenger rattling through a tunnel in an express train”—not exactly praise of the highest order. 

A performance for the entire piece (or entire at the time; the work was originally Mvts. 1–4, 6, and 7) was set up for 10 April 1868, Good Friday, in Bremen.  Choral rehearsals began in February.  This may not seem like much time, given that this was a new work and not the easiest sing in the world (Brahms himself acknowledged the piece as difficult and said only good choruses should do it).  Today, of course, most performances are by a chorus that includes people who’ve sung it before, plus we have lots of recordings available, plus YouTube is our friend, and so on.  But at least the 1868 chorus didn’t need to work on their German pronunciation.

And speaking of pronunciation, fellow English-speaking choristers, take a moment to think about how you are pronouncing words such as bringen, Wohnungen, verlanget, verschlungen, Dinge.  Are you pronouncing them with a hard G?  If so, CUT IT OUT RIGHT NOW.  Yes, for the most part German is a WYSIWYG language in terms of pronunciation (What You See Is What You Get), unlike French, but not every G is hard.  The G is hard in words like Morgen, folgen, and Geist, but when it is preceded by an N, it is not a hard G.  Think about the English words bringing, clinging, ringing, and singing (all words with a Germanic origin).  Do you pronounce them with a hard G?  No, you do not.  So, you shouldn’t pronounce bringen, Wohnungen, verlanget, verschlungen, or Dinge with a hard G, either.

Okay, I’m done with my rant.  But I can’t promise I won’t give you the evil eye if I hear inappropriate hard Gs around me. 

Brahms conducted the Good Friday performance with a hefty chorus of 200 singers (that’s the number of vocal scores ordered) and a big orchestra—48 violins!  The concert started with Mvts. 1 to 4, and then came the slow movement of the Bach violin concerto in A minor, the andante from a Tartini work, and an arrangement of the Schumann song Abendlied, all performed by Brahms’s good friend, the great violinist Joseph Joachim.  Mvts. 6 and 7 then followed (remember, Mvt. 5 did not yet exist), and the concert concluded with excerpts from Bach’s Matthew Passion plus “I know that my redeemer liveth,” “Behold the Lamb of God,” and the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah.  I have also read that Agatha’s aria “Wie nahte mir die Schlummer” from Der Freischütz was included.  Lest we think that it was only the Good Friday performance date that generated this (to us) odd combo, we should remember that many nineteenth-century concerts were a mixed bag in terms of repertoire. 

The concert was a big success, as it deserved to be.  Chorus master Karl Reinthaler called it an “epoch-making work,” and Clara wrote afterwards that “The Requiem has taken hold of me as no other sacred music ever did before...It was a joy such as I have not felt for a long time.” 

One month later Brahms had completed the fifth movement, supposedly after a visit to his mother’s grave.  The movement was performed by itself in a concert in Zurich on 17 September.  The full seven-movement Requiem received its first performance on 18 February 1869, given by the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra and chorus.  The Requiem rapidly became a favorite choral/orchestral work, and by that I mean a favorite in the entire choral/orchestral rep, not just among Brahms’s works.  The American premiere, by the New York Choral Society, came in 1877. 

Already in 1869 Brahms had prepared a four-hand piano version at the request of his publisher (piano reductions of orchestral parts were a standard way of making pieces known before the days of recording).  This is sometimes called the London version after an 1871 performance in a private home in that city.  That performance was rather high end, with two concert pianists at the keyboard and 30+ professional singers.  There’s an excellent recording of it by noted vocal ensemble Seraphic Fire. 

But not everyone was a fan.  I have to confess that I didn’t particularly like the Requiem the first time I sang it (yes, I was an idiot).  George Bernard Shaw, normally a very perceptive listener, said that “listening to the Requiem was a sacrifice that should be asked of a man only once in his life.”  More recently, a 1958 summary stated that “the total effect is one of noble dreariness” and “the reputation of this interminable work is, among critics, justifiably waning.”  Well, there will always be those who find Brahms unappealing.  In any event, the Requiem is still alive, well, and thriving. 

In addition to the four-part chorus and soprano and baritone soloists, Brahms employs an orchestra that was larger than anything he had used to that point in his career: double winds plus piccolo and contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two harps, timpani, strings, and organ.  The two harps, by the way, play the same part, a common practice at the time.  At one point he provided metronome markings, but they soon fell by the wayside—Brahms disliked them in general and was notorious for tempo fluctuations in his own performances (Clara complained about this on more than one occasion). 

At one point Brahms stated that a well-known chorale underlay the entire work.  This is generally considered to be Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, a chorale used by Bach in Cantata 21, which Brahms conducted in November 1863.  Another unifying device is what is sometimes called the “Selig” motive, the three pitches the sopranos sing at the opening of the work: F A Bb.  This leap of a third followed by a step in the same direction appears throughout the work in numerous guises, sometimes transposed, sometimes inverted, sometimes in retrograde motion.  See for example “daß ein En-” in the sopranos at the beginning of the third movement, “Wie lieblich” to start the fourth (preceded by the inverted form in the orchestra), “Herr, du bist” to begin the fugue in Mvt. 6, the soprano opening of the last movement, and so on. 

In its final form the Requiem has seven movements; the chorus is involved almost nonstop.  The insertion of the fifth movement into the original layout has two useful side effects.  First, although there is still plenty for the chorus to do in that movement, our part involves less music and is less taxing here than elsewhere in the Requiem.  The movement thus provides some much-needed vocal rest before the challenging sixth movement.  Second, and more apparent to the audience (or at least the analyst), the fifth movement turns the Requiem into a work with various symmetries in its layout.  A quick overview shows the following:

1. Selig sind, die da Leid tragen —Chorus	C	F major
2. Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras —Chorus	3/4	Bb minor
3. Herr, lehre doch mich —Baritone and Chorus	¢	D minor
4. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen —Chorus	3/4	Eb major
5. Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit —Soprano and Chorus	C	G major
6. Denn wir haben hie —Baritone and Chorus	C	C minor
7. Selig sind die Toten —Chorus	C	F major

Movements 1 and 7 both use texts from the Beatitudes and both are in F major.  Movements 2 and 6 are lengthy and intense, with contrapuntal closings, and both travel from minor to the parallel major in the course of the movement.  Movements 3 and 5 each use a soloist, and 4 is the warm center of the composition.  Other symmetries will be noted in the following discussion. 

Translation

Conclusion

This is a piece I’ve sung a lot: the soprano part, the alto part, in German, in English, and of course movement 4 in both languages in various church services, funerals, memorial observations, and so on.  We are certainly all aware that this is one of the great masterpieces of the choral literature.  What we singers don’t always realize, I think, is just what the piece represents in Brahms’s life, and I don’t mean simply as a Requiem for his mother and/or Schumann, or as the largest choral work he ever wrote.  This is the piece that put Brahms the composer on the map—not Brahms the choral composer, but Brahms the composer, pure and simple. 

Prior to the Requiem, Brahms had written plenty of music: works for piano; songs; chamber, orchestral, and choral music.  These earlier works included plenty of excellent pieces: the wonderful Op. 11 serenade for orchestra; the exciting Op. 15 piano concerto in D minor; the glorious Op. 17 songs for women’s chorus, horns, and harp; the magnificent Handel variations for piano, Op. 24; and the stunning string sextet Op. 36.  But he had never tackled anything as complicated as the Requiem, with the combination of solo voices, chorus, orchestra, and widely contrasting texts.  Nor had he ever done anything as long.  At the time he began concentrated composition on the Requiem, he was all of 31 years old, and he had already been hailed as Beethoven’s successor—a mantle that hung so heavily on him that he was in his 40s before he completed his first symphony.  I think we can safely say that he was more than a little freaked out by the comparison. 

Obviously we can’t know precisely what Brahms was thinking when he turned his attention to the Requiem, but I suspect that there was a very strong element, following his mother’s death, of “it’s time to do it”—to write the big, important work that would show all his compositional powers in their full strength: mastery of vocal writing, orchestration, counterpoint, harmony, formal structure, text expression, you name it.  And it did the trick—this is the work after which everyone had to acknowledge that Brahms was a major composer, not just a good pianist who also composed. 

He never again wrote a choral/orchestral work with sacred text, and he never wrote another choral work as long—or for that matter, a work of any kind as long—not the symphonies, not the concertos.  We choral singers can take a certain pride in the fact that he chose our medium for his most elaborate work, and one of the very finest in a lifetime of masterpieces.   

Schicksalslied

Schicksalslied is one of four shorter choral/orchestral works of Brahms that continue to be performed regularly, the others being the Alto Rhapsody (for male chorus only), Nänie, and Gesang der Parzen.  They fall into a large category of nineteenth-century choral/orchestral works that are ill-defined in terms of genre.  Karen Ahlquist, for example, calls Schicksalslied a cantata, a term that has a fairly specific meaning during the Baroque but a much less fixed one thereafter. 

Several writers have noted that the continued popularity of Schicksalslied and its companions is owing to multiple reasons.  Alwes, for example, who calls these pieces “secular dramatic choral-orchestral works,” says that “These pieces have remained popular not only for their intrinsic musical beauty, but, perhaps more important, also for their ability to lend variety to the typical orchestral concert without overextending either the orchestra or the chorus,” and “[these] rank among the most beloved and oft-performed choral-orchestral works of any type, probably because, though significantly less demanding than the Requiem, they do not compromise or restrict his expressive power.”  Ahlquist likewise remarks on how readily Schicksalslied (and similar short works) fits into a concert program. 

Brahms began writing Schicksalslied in 1868 and finished in May 1871, with a premiere in Karlsruhe on 18 October 1871.  He conducted the concert, where Schicksalslied was placed in between the Overture and Garden Scene from Schumann’s Faust.  The work proved popular from the start, with more than 30 performances in the following decade. 

Brahms came across the text while on vacation in the summer of 1868.  He was so excited by its possibilities that he cut short his trip to focus on composition.  The text that captured Brahms’s imagination was Hyperions Schicksalslied, an interpolated poem in the epistolary novel Hyperion, or The Hermit in Greece.  The author was noted German Romantic writer Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843); his book was published in two volumes in 1797 and 1799.  The novel, set in the eighteenth century, deals with Hyperion’s attempts to rid Greece of its Turkish rulers.  As a sad aside, Hölderlin was beset by mental illness and spent the last half of his life in a “Tower Room,” cared for by others while he continued to write. 

Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien!
Glänzende Götterlüfte
Rühren euch leicht,
Wie die Finger der Künstlerin
Heilige Saiten.

You walk in the light above
on soft ground, blessed spirits!
gleaming divine breezes
touch you as gently
as the finger of the performer
on sacred strings.

Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
Saügling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt
In bescheidener Knospe
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller,
Ewiger Klarheit.

Free from destiny, like the sleeping
infant, breathe the celestial ones;
chastely preserved
in modest buds,
their spirit
blooms forever,
and their happy eyes
look on in silent,
eternal clarity.

Doch uns ist gegeben
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruh’n;
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde zur andern
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen,
Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab.

Yet to us is given
no place to rest;
suffering mankind
withers and falls
blindly from one
hour to the next
like water hurled
from rock to rock,
down into the unknown forever.

Translation by Honey Meconi

Brahms set the work for SATB chorus (with some divisi), no soloists, and his usual rather conservative orchestra with two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets; three trombones; timpani; and five-part strings.  The work can be divided into four sections.

Measures 1–28

The opening is for orchestra alone in Eb Major and common time.  The tempo indication is “Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll,” slow and full of longing.  Its purpose is to set the mood for the opening choral text.

Measures 29–103

The chorus enters to sing the first two verses of Hölderlin’s poem, which portray the serenity and tranquility of the celestial world whose beings are free from the strictures of fate.  The altos open by themselves; since the early twentieth century writers have commented on the similarity of the orchestral writing at that point to the Air from Bach’s third orchestral suite.  Brahms, of course, was an avid follower of early music and was one of the original subscribers to the Bach complete works edition that was then in progress. 

The altos are soon joined by all voices in a largely homorhythmic texture, very lightly spiced by a few chromatic inflections.  The text setting is mostly syllabic, making comprehension easy.  Only towards the end of this section (m. 84) do the voices have a little independence, but they are rapidly back in lockstep by m. 88.  The smooth complicity of all voices, of course, reflects the lack of strife and conflict in the heavenly realms being depicted. 

Measures 104–379

The final stanza of Hölderlin’s poem diverges sharply from the first two.  Here we are in the world of humans, where a cruel destiny causes endless suffering.  Quite possibly this is the part of the poem that appealed most strongly to Brahms, whose character was rather dour and who had a largely pessimistic view of life.  In any event, the textual contrast is matched by a dramatic change in the music.  Tempo, meter, and key all change.  We move from the opening duple meter to triple, the tempo speeds up to allegro, and the key shifts to C Minor, the relative minor of the original Eb Major that represented the placid world of the spirits.  And although the key signature remains that of C minor throughout the section, there’s lots of chromaticism and the overall harmonic feeling is unstable; our often jagged melodic lines underscore this uncertainty, and Brahms’s use of cross-rhythms adds to this as well.  Nothing about this part is calm. 

As the section begins, we sing, forte, in octaves for the first 20 measures, and we remain in syllabic homorhythm when we move to harmonic part-writing in m. 132.  There’s a nice bit of text-painting for the water hurled from rock to rock (wie Wasser von Klippe zu Klippe geworfen) in mm. 146–152, where the words are chopped into quarter-note syllables, each syllable followed by a quarter rest.  The resulting disjointed rhythm is classic Brahms (we feel like we’re in two, even though we’re still in three).  That’s followed by a measure of silence in both voice and orchestra, and then more text-painting: the first syllable of “jahrlang” (“year long,” with the implication of forever) is the longest rhythmic value to appear in this section.  As if that weren’t enough emphasis on how long humanity is doomed to suffer, the sonority is an unstable fully diminished seventh chord, topped by a good high G in the sopranos.  Whew! 

But Brahms isn’t done with us yet; things calm down briefly with the last phrase of the stanza, there’s a brief orchestral bit, and then he sets this stanza’s text all over again.   This time some things are the same; some things are changed.  The “Doch uns” phrase, though melodically identical at the start, is now first presented in imitation at a piano dynamic.  And “doch uns” comes back again and again, at mm. 221, 261, 265, and 273, usually in some kind of soft dynamic.  The lack of musical rest here—this constant repetition—depicts the text perfectly: no place to rest. 

The “Es schwinden” line (mm. 283–293) is an almost exact repeat of the previous appearance (mm. 121–131).  “Blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern” is similar but altered, and “wie Wasser etc.” has the same structure as before but is transposed up to make it even more dramatic.  “Ins Ungewisse hinab” is first presented twice as before, but with different harmonies.  Then, at m. 332, the pianissimo orchestra slowly builds rising triads over a throbbing eighth-note timpani accompaniment.  At m. 341 sopranos and tenors have one last repetition of “ins Ungewisse hinab,” and then it is the turn of altos and basses at 355, after which the orchestra takes over for the rest of this section.  The choral endings seem hopeless, finishing as they do on a falling gesture, the final one being a mournful half-step. 

Measures 380–409

The closing section is surprising.  We are suddenly back in the world of the opening, with an adagio tempo, common time, and a major tonality, but this time it is C major (the parallel major to the previous section’s C minor). The music, too, is a varied repeat of the opening section.  Brahms may have had an Eeyore personality, but for whatever reason he refused to end the work in the unhappy world of humans.  Instead, he returns us musically to the untroubled divine.  This is unexpected, as is the choice of key.  While other composers explored the idea of “progressive tonality,” ending a work in a key other than that of the opening, in almost all of his compositions Brahms steadfastly followed the traditional practice of returning to his opening sonority—but not in this piece.  And it is certainly odd to have a choral work end without the chorus—not just for a few measures, as happens in numerous compositions (e.g., Beethoven’s ninth), but rather thirty measures of an adagio tempo.  Some of the early critics faulted him for this ending, believing that it went against Hölderlin’s intentions. 

Brahms himself wrestled with the conclusion, and tried having some text or just the chorus singing “ah,” but to no avail.  Less than a week after the work’s premiere, he wrote to a friend that “The Schicksalslied is about to be printed, and the chorus falls silent in the final adagio.  Call it a stupid idea if you will, there is nothing to be done about it.  I had fallen so low as to consider writing words in for chorus, but it wouldn’t work.  It may be a failed experiment, but tacking on new words would only have produced nonsense.  As we already discussed at length: I am saying something that the poet does not say; and to be sure, it would be better if what he fails to say were the main point.”  We singers thus conclude this striking work as silent witnesses to unforeseen heavenly peace—Brahms’s goal, if not the poet’s. 

Nänie

In Schumann’s famous Neue Zeitschrift für Musik article, he called on Brahms to “direct his magic wand where the massed forces of chorus and orchestra may lend him their power.”  Brahms answered this call most famously in his German Requiem, but also wrote a series of other important works using women’s, men’s, or mixed chorus.  Nänie is one of his last creations in this realm. 

The painter Anselm Feuerbach, a friend of Brahms’s, died in January 1880.  Brahms had liked his classically-influenced paintings very much and began working on Nänie, his Op. 82, the following summer; he completed it in the summer of 1881, and dedicated the work to Feuerbach’s stepmother, who had provided both emotional and financial support to the painter. 

Brahms chose as his text a poem by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), whose writings were set by many composers (e.g. Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony).  The title comes from the Latin nenia, funeral dirge, and captures the inevitability of death, yet noting at the end that not everyone receives the tribute of a lamentation.  In keeping with the Latin title, the poem is filled with classical references:

measure 26/rehearsal B

Auch das Schöne muß sterben! Das Menschen und Götter bezwinget,
Even the beautiful must die! That which overcomes men and gods

measure 42

Nicht die eherne Brust rührt es dem stygischen Zeus.
Does not move the brass breast of the Stygian Zeus.
[Zeus was the head God; the River Styx marked the entry to the Underworld; thus, the Stygian Zeus is Hades, God of the Underworld]

measure 47/rehearsal C + 1

Einmal nur erweichte die Liebe den Schattenbeherrscher,
Only once did love soften the Lord of the Shadows [Hades],
[When Orpheus descended to rescue Euridice]

measure 59

Und an der Schwelle noch, streng, rief er zurück sein Geschenk.
And yet at the threshold he sternly called back his gift.
[When Orpheus turned to look at Euridice, disobeying Hades]

measure 65/rehearsal D + 1

Nicht stillt Aphrodite dem schönen Knaben die Wunde,
Aphrodite [goddess of love] could not staunch the wounds of the beautiful boy [Adonis]

measure 71

Die in den zierlichen Leib grausam der Eber geritzt.
That the boar cruelly cut on the delicate body.

measure 74/rehearsal E

Nicht errettet den göttlichen Held die unsterbliche Mutter,
The immortal mother [the sea nymph Thetis] cannot save the godlike hero [Achilles]

measure 78

Wenn er, am skäischen Tor fallend, sein Schicksal erfüllt.
When, falling at the Scaean gate [before Troy], he fulfilled his destiny,

measure 85

Aber sie steigt aus dem Meer mit allen Töchtern des Nereus,
But she rises from the sea with all the daughters of Nereus [Sea God; Old Man of the Sea]

measure 90

Und die Klage hebt an um den verherrlichten Sohn.
And lifts up the lament for her glorious son.

measure 97/rehearsal F & measure 119/rehearsal G

Siehe, da weinen die Götter, es weinen die Göttinnen alle,
Look! The gods cry; the goddesses all cry

measure 107 & measure 124

Daß das Schöne vergeht, daß das Vollkommene stirbt.
That the beautiful passes away, that the perfect dies.

measure 149/rehearsal H & measure 163/rehearsal I + 1

Auch ein Klaglied zu sein im Mund der Geliebten ist herrlich,
Even to be a lament in the mouth of the beloved is splendid,

measure 158

Denn das Gemeine geht klanglos zum Orkus hinab.
For the common one goes down to Orcus unsung.
[Orcus: the Roman god of the Underworld, and also the Underworld itself]

Translation by Honey Meconi

Brahms set the work for SATB chorus and an orchestra consisting of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, three trombones, timpani, harp, and strings (with instructions to double the harp part if possible).  As is typical for Brahms, this is not a large orchestra, and he eliminates the usual trumpets.  The first run-through of the work, in fact, was by the orchestra at Meiningen with a mere 49 players. 

Brahms’s relatively restrained use of the orchestra was one of the many ways in which he was branded as a conservative in the nineteenth century, along with his preference for the traditional genres of symphony and chamber music and such old-fashioned formal devices as the repeat of the exposition in the opening movements of his first three symphonies.  In these respects he stood in contrast to what was called the “New German School” exemplified in the music of Liszt, Wagner, and Berlioz (note how two of these composers are not German) with their attention to the symphonic poem and the music drama.  In greatly simplified terms, they wrote “program music,” music telling a story; Brahms wrote “abstract music,” music that was purely about music. 

Brahms briefly engaged in the polemics surrounding these debates, writing a manifesto against the “music of the future” propounded by Liszt et al., but soon left it to others (e.g. the famous critic Eduard Hanslick) to fight those battles.  And Brahms met Wagner and considered himself a supporter; he attended the Munich premieres of both Das Rheingold and Die Walküre and helped with other Wagner performances.  For his part, Wagner was critical of Brahms’s work but apparently enjoyed the composer’s performance of his Handel Variations for piano (as well he might! a terrific piece with a superb final fugue).  One interesting Wagner connection: the very striking cadence from m. 141 to 142—where the text, highlighted by our lack of accompaniment, tells us that perfection dies—is the same harmonic motion found in one of the most moving moments of Die Walküre: the instant at which Wotan kisses away Brünnhilde’s immortality.  Coincidence?  I think not. 

Brahms is, in fact, very much a nineteenth-century composer, as Nänie clearly shows.  The thick textures, the chromatic harmony that makes some passages challenging to sing (e.g. mm. 101–103, as the gods and goddesses weep), and especially the constantly shifting rhythms all mark him as a composer of his time, not an anachronism from the eighteenth century. 

Overall the work has a tripartite structure, with the opening and closing in D major and a lilting 6/4 meter while the interior section is in 4/4 and F# major, a typical nineteenth-century third relation (pity the poor accompanist, dealing with six sharps—until we move to C# major, because seven sharps are so much easier than six).  This middle part begins at m. 85, where Brahms indulges in obvious text painting: Thetis rises from the sea as all voices sing a rising melodic line in octaves.  Brahms is sensitive throughout to the text; note the switch to a sweet F major (m. 65) when we sing of Aphrodite, goddess of love; the hush at m. 97 as the basses (and orchestra) drop out briefly and we call attention to the weeping of the immortals; the move to f# minor (m. 75) when we refer to the death of Achilles.  

Also typically Brahmsian is the varied repetition throughout.  Our imitative opening material doesn’t just recur at the end when we return to 6/4 and D major; notice the connection with the music of Letter C (and thus also I); see  how phrase after phrase closes with (largely) homorhythmic descending hemiolas (m. 45, m. 63, m. 73, m. 82, and then again in the closing section).  Nor does Brahms restrict himself to a single iteration of the text.  As we come to the end of Schiller’s poem, Brahms highlights what is most important to him.  The weeping of the gods and goddesses on the death of the perfect (Siehe! etc.) is set twice, first at m. 97 (F) with fluctuating harmonies and again at m. 116 (G), now in a clear F# major (until things get fuzzy starting in m. 130), bringing back the music of m. 85. 

But the most important text repetition comes at the end.  Schiller’s poem closes with the reference to the unsung passage of most of us, with the final word being “hinab,” down.  Brahms, though, returns to the previous line, “to be a lament in the mouth of the beloved is splendid.”  By doing this he ends his lament for his friend with the acknowledgment that Feuerbach was not “common,” but rather worthy of being heralded on his passing.  Our final word, swelling and dying away in unified rhythm over the arpeggiated orchestra, is “herrlich,”: splendid, glorious.  And that is what this piece is. 

Gesang der Parzen

Brahms’s last major choral work (and his last choral/orchestral composition) was his Gesang der Parzen, Op. 89, written in the summer of 1882.  The text is taken from Goethe’s play Iphigenie auf Tauris, which Brahms had seen.  The play treats the Greek myth of Iphigenia, daugher of the same messed-up family that brought you Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and (essentially) the Trojan War.  In a (longish) nutshell, the beautiful Helen, wife of Spartan king Menelaus, was spirited off to Troy by Trojan prince Paris.  Agamemnon, the brother of Menelaus, was commander in chief of the Greek forces that gathered in Aulis before taking off to seek revenge on Paris.  Strong winds made it impossible for the Greeks to embark on their voyage to Troy; a soothsayer revealed that only with the sacrifice of a maiden (Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia) would the winds become favorable. 

In the version of the story told by Euripides (there are various conflicting accounts of most of these myths), Iphigenia was thought to have been sacrified but was secretly spirited away to Tauris, where she served as a priestess at the temple of the goddess Artemis.  Meanwhile, the Trojan War lasted ten years and was eventually won by the Greeks.  Agamemnon returned home with the spoils of war, including the Trojan princess Cassandra, his reward.  He was promptly murdered by his wife Clytemnestra in revenge for the death of Iphigenia.  Then, in revenge for Agamemnon’s death, Clytemnestra was killed by her son Orestes.  For absolution, Orestes needed to bring the sacred image of Artemis from Tauris to Athens.  In Tauris, though, they regularly sacrified any Greeks who ventured there, putting Iphigenia in the charming position of having to choose between betraying those in Tauris who had saved her, or sending her brother to his death.  This is the background for the “Song of the Fates,” a gloomy text that reiterates the helplessness of humans in the face of destiny and the coldness of the gods. 

Brahms reinforces this sombre mood through numerous choices.  The six-voice chorus is divided so that the emphasis is on the lower voices (SAATBB, a favorite divisi for the composer).  The orchestra, slightly bigger than that of Nänie, drops the harp and adds piccolo, contrabassoon, four trumpets, and tuba.  In contrast to Nänie, there is little contrapuntal writing for the voices but rather much homorhythmic writing and contrast between higher and lower voices. 

The piece begins and ends in the minor mode (d minor, to be specific) but visits various keys in between. Marked key changes take us to c# minor (m. 84, “from the abysses of the deep steams the breath of the suffocating Titans”) and D major (m. 116, with a shift to 3/4 as well, “the rulers turn their blessing eye”) but Brahms also cadences elsewhere (e.g. C major, f minor, A major) and sprinkles chromaticisim throughout.  As with the earlier Nänie, he uses the striking harmonic shift from the key moment in Die Walküre to bring us to the return of the opening material (m. 100).

Brahms pulls together the piece in various ways.  The opening of the work follows a relentless quarter/eighth/eighth rhythmic pattern, brought back with the opening music in m. 104, and used for the concluding motive, “thus sang the fates,” from m. 162 forward.  The music of mm. 40–50 or so reappears, in varied form, from the pick-up to m. 72 forward (both texts refer to the golden tables of the gods).  Another varied repetition occurs when the material of mm. 60–68 (“and wait in vain”) inspires that of 90–100 (“like sacrifical odors, a light cloud.”)  Meanwhile, Brahms’s masterful use of rhythmic shifts generates continued interest throughout.  See, for example, the brilliant treatment of rhythm in mm. 12 and 13—silence on the strong beats, and eighth-note pickups to the chords of the weak beats—a pattern then shifted in mm. 15–17. 

In response to the Fourth Symphony, one of Brahms’s critics wrote “once again, Brahms has set his beard to music.”  Unquestionably Brahms is a serious composer, and Gesang der Parzen is one of his most serious works.  It’s our task as singers to transmit those depths to our listeners, and to ponder them ourselves.

Works (selected)

Brahms is another one of those composers for whom the expression “it’s all good” works fairly well, so this (incomplete) list of works is still rather lengthy.  He is, after all, one of the “Three Bs” of classical music: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.  At the same time, his music is for many is acquired taste.  When I was an undergraduate, for instance, I loved the second piano concerto but didn’t care for the first (this just shows what an idiot I was—both pieces are fantastic).  So if you are testing these out and don’t like something, just move on to another piece.  You might want to try the late piano works, Op. 116, 117, 118, 119—each a collection of relatively short “character” pieces: capriccio, intermezzo, ballade, romance, rhapsody.  A few years ago one of our students played Op. 118 #2, an intermezzo in A Major, at our commencement ceremony, and it captured perfectly the bittersweet emotion of graduation, ending one chapter of one’s life and starting another.  Or what about the passionate scherzo of the second piano concerto?  Or that killer fugue that ends the Handel variations?  Or the...well, you get the point.  Hours and hours and hours of incredible music, all a gift to us.

Orchestral

• Serenade No. 1 in D, Op. 11
• Serenade No. 2 in A, Op. 16
• Piano Concerto No. 1 in dm, Op. 15
• Piano Concerto No. 2 in Bb, Op. 83
• Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a (Brahms’s two-piano version is Op. 56b)
• Symphony No. 1 in cm, Op. 68
• Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73
• Symphony No. 3 in F, Op. 90
• Symphony No. 4 in em, Op. 98
• Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77
• Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80
• Tragic Overture, Op. 81
• Double Concerto in am, Op. 102, for Violin and Cello
• Three Hungarian Dances (No. 1, 3, 10), arranged by Brahms from original version (piano, 4 hands)

Chamber

• Piano Trio #1 in B, Op. 8
• Piano Trio #2 in C, Op. 87
• Piano Trio #3 in cm, Op. 101
• String Sextet #1 in Bb, Op. 18
• String Sextet #2 in G, Op. 36
• Piano Quartet #1 in gm, Op. 25
• Piano Quartet #2 in A, Op. 26
• Piano Quartet #3 in cm, Op. 60
• Piano Quintet in fm, Op. 34
• Cello Sonata #1 in cm, Op. 38
• Cello Sonata #2 in F, Op. 99
• Horn Trio in Eb, Op. 40
• String Quartet #1 in cm, Op. 51 #1
• String Quartet #2 in am, Op. 51 #2
• String Quartet #3 in Bb, Op. 67
• Violin Sonata #1 in G, Op. 78
• Violin Sonata #2 in A, Op. 100
• Violin Sonata #3 in dm, Op. 108
• String Quintet #1 in F, Op. 88
• String Quintet #2 in G, Op. 111
• Clarinet Trio in am, Op. 114
• Clarinet Quintet in bm, Op. 115
• Clarinet Sonata in fm, Op. 120 #1
• Clarinet Sonata in Eb, Op. 120 #2

Keyboard

Solo Piano

• Piano Sonata #1 in C, Op. 1
• Piano Sonata #2 in f#m, Op. 2
• Piano Sonata #3 in fm, Op. 5
• Variations on a Theme by Schumann, Op. 9
• 4 Ballades, Op. 10
• Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21 #1
• Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op. 21 #2
• Handel Variations, Op. 24
• Paganini Variations, Op. 35
• 16 Waltzes, Op. 39  (originally for piano four hands; #15 in Ab best known)
• Op. 76 (four Capriccios and four Intermezzi)
• Rhapsody in bm, Op. 79 #1
• Rhapsody in gm, Op. 79 #2
• Op. 116 (three Capriccios and four Intermezzi)
• Op. 117 (three Intermezzi)
• Op. 118 (four Intermezzi, one Ballade, one Romance)
• Op. 119 (three Intermezzi, one Rhapsody)
• 10 Hungarian Dances (arrangement of first ten from original for piano four hands)

Piano Four Hands

• 21 Hungarian Dances, of which the best-known are No. 5 in f#m, No. 6 in Db, No. 19 in bm, and No. 21 in em.  Brahms arranged the first ten for solo piano and Nos. 1, 3, and 10 for orchestra.  Other musicians later transcribed everything for orchestra, Joachim did violin/piano arrangements, and so on.  Very popular pieces!

Organ

• 11 Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 posth. (his last works)
• also 3 preludes and fugues + one fugue without opus numbers

Vocal Quartets (normally SATB with piano; often done by choirs as well)

• Op. 31, three quartets
• Op. 52, Liebeslieder Waltzes (18 pieces; piano four hand accompaniment)
• Op. 64, three quartets
• Op. 65, Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes (15 pieces; piano four hand accompaniment)
• Op. 92, four quartets
• Op. 103 Zigeunerlieder (11 pieces)
• Op. 112, 6 quartets

Songs—almost 200 of these; some notable ones include the following:

• An die Nachtigall  Op. 46 #4
• Auf dem Kirchhofe  Op. 105 #4
• Botschaft  Op. 47 #1
• Dämm’rung senkte sich von oben, Op. 59 #1
• Erinnerung  Op. 63 #2
• Feldeinsamkeit Op. 86 #2
• Geistliches Wiegenlied  Op. 91 #2
• Gestillte Sehnsucht  Op. 91 #1
• Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer  Op. 105 #2
• Die Liebende schreibt, Op. 47 #5
• Liebestreu, Op. 3 #1
• Mainacht  Op. 43 #2
• Sapphische Ode  Op. 94 #4
• Sonntag  Op. 47 #3
• Ständchen  Op. 106 #1
• Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht, Op. 96 #1
• Vergebliches Ständchen  Op. 84 #4
• Verrat  Op. 105 #5
• Von ewiger Liebe  Op. 43 #1
• Wiegenlied  Op. 49 #4
• Op. 33, Magelone Lieder
• Op. 69, nine songs
• Op. 70, four songs
• Op. 71, five songs
• Op. 72, five songs
• Op. 121, Vier ernste Gesänge

Choral

Unaccompanied

• Marienlieder (7), Op. 22, for 4v; all but #3 also arranged for women’s voices
• 2 Motets, Op. 29, for 5v
• Drei geistliche chöre, Op. 37, for women’s voices
• Fünf Lieder, op. 41, for men’s voices (Nos. 1 & 2 also arranged for women’s voices)
• Drei Gesänge, op. 42, for 6v  (No. 2 also arranged for women’s voices) 
• Zwölf Lieder und Romanzen, op. 44, for women’s voices with optional piano
  Nos. 5 & 6 also arranged for mixed chorus
• Two Motets, Op. 74, for 4-6v
• Fest- und Gedenksprüche (3), op. 109, for 8v
• Three Motets, Op. 110, for 4-8v

Accompanied

• Ave Maria, Op. 12, for women’s voices & orchestra or organ
• Begräbnisgesang, Op. 13, for 5v, winds & timpani
• Vier Gesänge, Op. 17, for women’s voices, harp & horns
• Geistliches Lied, Op. 30, for 4v & organ
• Ein deutsches Requiem (German Requiem), Op. 45
• Rinaldo, Op. 50, for men’s voices, tenor, and orchestra 
• Alto Rhapsodie, Op. 53, for men’s voices, alto, and orchestra
• Schicksalslied, Op. 54, for 4v and orchestra
• Triumphlied, Op.  55, for 8v, baritone, and orchestra
• Nänie, Op. 82, for 4v and orchestra
• Gesang der Parzen, op. 89, for 6v and orchestra

April 2017. Revised March 2022, October 2022