Recommended. WebThis page lists all sheet music of Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. However, circumstances were increasingly troubled at home in Hamburg. Thus, Armin Zebrowski infers from the fourth movement's blessing of those who dwell in the house of the Lord a reciprocal meaning of God dwelling within us and thus giving rise to true peace, which, in turn, magnifies the significance of the tranquil musical setting. Take, for example, the opening phrase, "Selig sind." From there, he speculates, the piece grew gradually, a series of considered and rejected ideas. Remarkably, perhaps overrun by the stereo revolution, this splendid monaural recording was never released at the time and was issued only in 1972 on the budget Odyssey LP label. Johannes Brahms leads his lifelong friend Clara Schumann up the aisle of St. Peter's Cathedral in Bremen, arm-in-arm, as though they were about to be Brahms was an intensely private man; he left no written credo, and we will never know exactly what his religious beliefs were. He was confirmed in the Lutheran church as a youth and knew the bible thoroughly; it would remain a key source of inspiration for him throughout his life. The full work was first heard in Leipzig on February 18, 1869, completed by the lovely new fifth movement. Brahms's setting is framed by an instrumental prelude and postlude. Yet the title Johannes Brahms bestowed upon his Ein Deutches Requiem ("A German Requiem") conveys a world of genuine meaning. Legend has it that Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, who sings her comforting solo with ravishing nurture, selflessly sang along with the chorus sopranos to bolster their efforts. Perhaps by refusing to take a point of view, Toscanini suggests an inherent complexity to Brahms' conception, which contains both elements; while others vary their readings to convey both aspects in the appropriate sections, Toscanini's consistency leaves much to the imagination, making us work harder than we might wish to infer the emotional content. Even so, by distending the first and last movements to an even greater extent than the others, Lehmann suggests a complete mantle of peace descending on both mourners and deceased, albeit without the underlying sense of living that is an central component of Brahms' conception. A guide to Brahmss A German Requiem and its best recordings, Journalist and Critic, BBC Music Magazine. WebAn analysis and overview of Johannes Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem. Robert Shaw considers the result "a most sensitive gleaning of the Christian scriptures of a profound, loving and most personal order its own argument and its own organism" whose "spirit lies in the selection, not just the treatment, of the text." Singers were given numbers to represent their voice ranges, starting with 101 for the lowest bass, a tool Shaw used to adjust balances in advance, saving precious rehearsal time. Even though Mengelberg culminates with a slowly unfolding and majestic VI fugue and a ruminative finale, the overall impression is not one of mournful regret, but rather a contemplative celebration of life. At that point there were six movements, settings of Lutheran Bible texts Brahms had collated himself, which trace a trajectory from suffering to acceptance: the first movement opens, Blessed are they who mourn; the dramatic second movement opens by declaring that all flesh is like grass, but the word of the Lord endures; the third introduces the baritone soloist, who pleads with God for acceptance of his transience; the sunny fourth, the most popular standalone number, contemplates the beauty of heaven; the original fifth movement matches the second, setting the famous The trumpet shall sound, and continuing to demand Death, where is thy sting?; reconciliation is achieved in the last movement with the words Blessed are the dead. Joseph Braunstein contends that Brahms was deeply affected by Schumann's suicide attempt the next year and wanted to express his emotions in a large-scale work but realized he was not yet prepared and abandoned the effort. Fritz Lehmann, Berlin Philharmonic, St. Hedwig Cathedral Choir, Berlin Motet Choir, Otto Wiener, Maria Stader (1955, DG, 80'), Rudolf Kempe, Berlin Philharmonic, St. Hedwig Cathedral Choir, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Grmmer (1955, EMI, 76'). The requiem emerged from a decade of turmoil. All is there even the climaxes are not slighted but rather controlled and integrated through the sheer care and consistency of the performance, heard through the prism of Celibidache's distinctive outlook. When his brother was killed, Frink says his mother told him, That should have been you, Robert. It tortured him the rest of his life., People close to Shaw would put up with his difficult side because, says Jones, we knew that there was a more profound exposure to the music and exposure to him that was possible. Craig Jessop remembers him as a towering intellect, the likes of which I had never encountered. The fourth movement is tidily sung, but it is the orchestra that truly shines here, each timbre emerging, glowing from the overall texture, whether high winds, or rounded brass. Hanslick added that "a work so hard to understand and dwelling on nothing but ideas of death should not expect a popular success and should fail to please many elements of the great public." I used to say, My job is to get the water ready for him to walk on. I nearly drowned many times. Jones remembers that even a little thing like stumbling over a name would cause him to take it out on us. A recent Pristine restoration improves the fidelity to a remarkable degree, but, with equal irony, at the expense of reinstating the linguistic problems. It calls for a depth of tone which is almost unforgiving in its demands. Natasha Loges is the head of postgraduate programmes and professor of musicology at the Royal College of Music. Johannes rushed home but was too late to see her. While sorting through Schumann's estate, Brahms came upon a bare reference to a German Requiem and felt compelled to take up the task. The soloists are nicely restrained and the choral fugues unfold with clarity and detailed interplay of their vocal lines. The very opening heralds an especially devoted reading, as each orchestral phrase is layered with cumulative power, and we feel the weight of each word as Furtwngler constantly fine-tunes his tempos and smoothly integrates a vast dynamic range from gentle whispers to hair-raising climaxes through exquisite transitions. Indeed, one of Bach's very first cantatas (his 1707 "Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit," now numbered 106), is believed to have been written for a funeral and has been cited as a miniature model for the German Requiem, as it combines isolated lines from the Psalms, Isaiah, Luke, Acts, Ecclesiastices, Revelations and a 1533 Reissner hymn into a beautifully integrated 20-minute meditation comprised of an instrumental prelude, choruses suffused with soprano, alto, tenor and bass solos and a concluding chorale. For example, most of the tempo markings in early versions were simply Andante. The most palpable point of distinction is with the far more prevalent Catholic requiem Mass. That is truly possible only when the story and its meaning are told in the living language of the singer and listener. Still, says Jessop, Shaw struggled because he could not let go of the fear that he would do injury to the music itself. Jessop remembers Shaw saying, Rarely do music and text meet on the same high level, but in Brahms they do.. Brahms had long carried the idea of writing a requiem. Many commentators have noted with great admiration Brahms' deep knowledge of the Bible. But while using the same forces, Lehmann and Kempe exemplify two interpretive extremes within that tradition. Although the fifth movement was not performed till 1869, ten months after the Bremen premiere, Musgrave does not believe it was a late addition to the other six movements, as some have claimed. Yet the two realizations, while both exceptional, are far from identical the Norrington is notably leaner, crisper and faster and with good reason our only indications are indirect and thus somewhat speculative. Shaws longtime personal assistant, Nola Frink, was by his side as he struggled to find the right syllable for every note. The third movement begins with a vulnerable solo baritone imploring God for knowledge of his fate, poises on a musical brink as he agitatedly asks "What is my hope?" But perhaps the most significant but overlooked word in the title is the first and least prominent: "Ein" ("A"). His pupil Florence May noted that he had selected and arranged his text in order to present ascending ideas of sorrow consoled, doubt overcome, and, ultimately, death vanquished. For Brahms work on the German Requiem was cathartic; he told friends upon its completion: "Now I am consoled. Unlike most large religious works, the German Requiem was not written in response to a commission or for a public event, and so efforts to trace its inspiration are somewhat diffuse. Perchance through his title Brahms is modestly telling us that he did not purport to have created "the" definitive German requiem nor any other sort of authoritative proclamation, but rather sought to offer just one among infinite approaches toward understanding and grappling with the ultimate mystery of life and accepting the inescapable tragedy of our mortality. He was not so much setting texts as realizing them, he told symposium participantsa comment that inspired fellow faculty member Leonard Ratzlaff to chime in: This text is replete with tone painting, he said, citing the sudden key change in the sixth movement after the baritone sings in einem Augenblickin the blink of an eye. For Ratzlaff, who teaches choral conducting at the University of Alberta, it provided an object lesson for the conductors in the room: At some point, its important to have a micro look at the text, what it inspired the composer to write, harmonically and melodically., In the 1870s the Brahms Requiem received endless performances, says Musgrave, including premieres in London in 1871 and New York in 1877. Vocally, Brahms is as exhausting a piece as a chorus is asked to sing, he told the video interviewer. Musical illustrations are performed on the violin and piano. WebAlbum: Songfacts: "A German Requiem, To Words of the Holy Scriptures," is a large-scale choral work composed between 1865 and 1868 by German composer Johannes Brahms. Yet the German Requiem is nearly a secular work, and even avoids any mention whatsoever of Christ a source of early critical scorn that led to the insertion of excerpts from Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the premiere, perhaps to reassure ecclesiastical authorities of the composer's faith and to eliminate any suspicion of a challenge to Church doctrine. The miniature score I don't mean to be overly critical leaving aside comparisons to Furtwngler, this is a fine, compelling performance in its own right that underlines the score's drama and rises to a stirring, triumphant VI that leaves any thought of morbidity far behind. At a slow and patient 79 minutes, time seems suspended in a rarified atmosphere of deep spirituality. Shaw's brisker pace itself provides sufficient vigor to obviate a need for overt dramatizing, although he accelerates the proclamation of victory swallowing death in VI to a white heat, which further underlines its climactic role in the overall structure, and leads logically into a steadfast rendition of the following fugue praising God the Creator, as if to emphasize the inevitability of that thought. However, Reinthaler pointed out a hitch, namely that none of the movements clearly stated Christian doctrine. The fidelity is only fair, but it far outstrips Furtwngler's other extant recording at the 1947 Lucerne Festival (with Hans Hotter and Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, also on Music & Arts). To Musgrave, the familiar fourth movement, Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen, seems an odd man out. Did Brahms compose it at an earlier time? Four years later, this magnificent work fulfilled the prophecy of Brahmss genius made by Claras husband Robert in 1853. While he could be effusive in his praise, says Ratzlaff, he could also be quite sarcastic. Wonderfully played, sung and recorded, everything fits together superbly. WebAn analysis and overview of Johannes Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem. He solved all the challenges long before the first rehearsal of a piece in a way that made total sense to a singer.. Nevertheless, the work was soon performed all over Europe, including in a piano duet performance in London in 1871. Musgrave notes that the result enabled Brahms to achieve the same pattern of integrating variations of familiar musical forms that characterizes all of his mature long-form works. Abendroth's concert is superficially similar to Furtwngler's but with enough crucial distinctions to highlight why Furtwngler's magic is unique and eludes others who might be tempted to emulate him. WebFew realize just how late in his life Johannes Brahms took to composing orchestral music compared to his chamber music, which, alongside his own piano virtuosity, In Powerpoint style Dr. Ted gives us an introduction to Brahms greatest choral work. That aspect of the Requiem deserves its own attention. Brahms humbly suggests that all we can do is accept our unavoidable fate while life goes on for the benefit of the living, who must make the most of their brief time and pass along their deeds, findings, thoughts, hopes and wisdom as others have done before them. Brahms began to write his A German Requiem roughly midway through the long, tortured process of composing his First Symphony, a work begun in 1854 but not premiered until 1876. While marginally more dramatic (the powerful chord that concludes III is sustained for an astounding 18 seconds; in Stockholm it was "only" 12), the Lucerne recording resisted even the extraordinary restoration efforts of Maggi Payne and remains sonically challenging, afflicted not just with poor fidelity but severe wow, overload distortion and noise that often overwhelms the music and precludes genuine appreciation. According to Craig Jessop, another faculty member, No one conducted more performances of the Requiem or lavished more care on it than Robert Shaw. The former music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and current dean of Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. Nearly 30 years later, Brahms asked his publisher to remove the metronome marks from the score, saying that good friends had persuaded him to add them. For answers to those questions, Shaw would have sought someone with the expertise of yet another symposium faculty member, musicologist Michael Musgrave. Shaws message, as paraphrased by Ratzlaff, read, As far as Im concerned, its fine whether you come in or not. WebBrahms: Ein deutsches Requiem. What's in a name? Requiem is a poem sequence composed over a twenty-year period; it includes four sections of introduction, ten numbered central parts, and two epilogues. Symposium chair Andr Thomas, director of choral activities at Florida State University, dreamed that for the participants, it would feel something like sitting around the table with the renowned mentor Nadia Boulanger, a chance for them to spend four days immersed in the genius of Brahms and one of his greatest interpreters, Robert Shaw. Indeed, while the Catholic requiem begins with a blessing for the dead, here death is not even mentioned until the penultimate movement, nor are the dead themselves addressed until the finale. Yet he achieved a magnificent German Requiem with these Stockholm forces, undoubtedly due to the special rapport developed during his wartime visits to the neutral Sweden, which had provided his only contact with music and emissaries of the free world. Steven Ledbetter agrees that although the text belongs to no formal liturgy of any church, it "nonetheless represents a deeply felt response to the central problem of human existence.". While others have invested the work with greater serenity, drama or spirituality, Klemperer leads with granitic force while avoiding the grimness that afflicts some of his late work, and his supreme poise triumphantly treads the thin line between objectivity and disengagement. The vibrato-free Orchestre Rvolutionnaire et Romantique may divide listeners, but the payoff of this live performance from 2008 is the fabulous recorded sound quality across the range, from the throbbing subterranean bass which opens the work to the piercing, high solo winds of the inner movements. And the way we learn about his feelings is by learning to speak his languageas perfectly and trustingly as we can.. Hardings sense of structure in this 2019 recording is assured and persuasive, evoking a slow, dignified but steady move from the depths of grief into a bruised but courageous renewal. He would never do that. In working on a piece, Shaw guided his singers through the music painstakingly, one facet at a time. Indeed, he often seems to thwart our expectations an ardently sung and highly operatic V is drained of its usual sense of comfort, and the clipped articulation leading up to the VI fugue falls flat when the fugue itself reverts to a rather reflexive vantage. Jessop considers it the pinnacle of craftsmanship in composition for chorus. The former is 28 bars long and tonicizes E-flat major. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians construes the title mainly as a mandate to perform the work in the German language (although, ironically, the German Requiem is heard in translation far more often than any other religious work of comparable stature). Nearly all the great Furtwngler concert recordings reflect his long leadership of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras (and the corresponding familiarity and empathy of their musicians with his deeply personal and erratic style), and his results with foreign ensembles were mostly disappointing. (In contrast, Bach's secular 1727 "Funeral Ode" cantata, # 198, whose title suggests a more direct connection, is a diffuse treatment of a pompous ceremonial poem with far more musical than literary merit.). 1 in C minor, by Johannes Brahms. She is a regular critic for BBC Music Magazine and broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. The piece unfolds patiently and beautifully, with due attention to detail instead of the customary blur of growly bass, movement I begins with its joined quarter notes articulated just enough to add rhythmic support to the coalescing haze. The gathering, held just in advance of the 100th anniversary of Shaws birth, was a first for Chorus America. Arturo Toscanini, NBC Symphony, Westminster Choir, Herbert Janssen, Vivian Della Chiesa (1943, Guild CD, Pristine download; 71'). That same year had also seen him break off his engagement to Agathe von Siebold who, he later told a friend, was the last love of his life. The Brahms Requiem: Questions for the Conductor Along with questions about his musical and textual motivation, Brahms left several other issues to puzzle That was his custom, say the conductors who worked with him, but Shaw found it absolutely essential with the Requiem. For me, his mature confidence not only imbues the text with an appropriate nobility and assurance but compels appreciation for Brahms' achievement, inviting us to infer what we will from this fine, attentive presentation of the composer's materials. So any gain in comprehension is offset by a loss of musical suitability. The chorale lay at the root of the Requiem.. As conductors, we so often have to push singers to make the rhythm. By entering your details, you are agreeing to our terms and conditions and privacy policy. The concert opens with a movement from Beethovens Tenth (yes, Tenth!) So he would prepare obsessively, anticipating issues with balance, pitch, and rhythm, and so on. The structure of the Requiem is such a powerful thing, the way the end brings back the beginning through inversions and use of identical text: Selig sind. Ann Howard Jones took this opportunity for some practical advice: Structural analysis is the nitty-gritty of our work. The analysis starts big and goes lower and lower, she says. Thus, George Bernard Shaw sniped that the German Requiem was fit for a funeral home and the 1873 Musical Times echoed that "the Philharmonic concert hall is not the place for a funeral service." Symphony created by a computers analysis of incomplete musical The second movement is shapelessly slow; the fourth treacly and muffled. He also prefaces the German Requiem with a fine bonus Brahms' early Begrbnisgesang ("Burial Song"), a sensitive but rather routine setting for choir, brass and winds of a Lutheran hymn that speaks of eternal life, even while ending with a somber reminder of death's inevitability. A compromise for the premiere was achieved by including the aria I Know that My Redeemer Liveth from Handels Messiah. Ratzlaff remembers a letter he sent to his chorus following a problem-filled rehearsal during New Yorks Mostly Mozart Festival sometime in the early 70s. There was ample precedent for that approach, but none among major religious works of the time. Brahms was a structural composer, according to Musgrave, and as such he would think about the totality of the work. The event was poorly publicized, so the audience, according to Jessop, consisted only of Shaws wife Caroline, a few other people, and a cat. Neither makes much grammatical sense nor fits the rising notes comfortably, both begin with a sudden "bl" sound rather than the soft "s" that gently launches the original, the sibilance falls on the only syllable lacking one in the original, and the extended third note of the music sounds more soothing with Brahms' sustained "in" than with an "ar" or "ey" vowel. Never dull but rather purposeful and focused, it flows inexorably. Perhaps the most direct model was Bach, who set each of his 295 Church cantatas as a series of recitatives, arias, choruses, chorales and sinfonias (instrumental interludes) to a selection of Biblical texts, poetry and hymns intended to reflect and expound upon a teaching or concept. Schumann's widow Clara proclaimed the finished work as the fulfillment of her husband's prophesy and after a planned Schumann commemoration fell through, Brahms wrote: "You ought to know how much a work like the [German] Requiem belongs to Schumann.". Nor was Brahms likely to have known an obscure 1818 Deutsches Requiem that Franz Schubert had written for his brother. On December 1, 1867 the first three movements were given in Vienna. Among relatively straightforward recordings, Kempe's timing of 76 minutes pushes the limit without losing the work's intrinsic sense of hopefulness, mainly (as did Abendroth) through injecting acceleration and emphasis into the climactic sections that are nestled amid extreme reflection. For Jones, the most important lesson to pass along at the symposium was Shaws commitment to the symbols on the page as being what the composer wanted to hear. Prior to Shaw, Jones argued, American choral music was too much about the conductorthe Westminster sound, the St. In any case, if he began the Requiem by intending to create a chorale-based work in the tradition of Bach, he soon abandoned the idea, says Musgrave, because that influence reappears only in the sixth movement. The quotations and other factual information for this article are primarily derived from the following sources: Armin Zebrowski: "Brahms' German Requiem" (article in, R. Kinloch Anderson Karajan/Berlin (Angel SB-3838, 1977), William Mann Klemperer/Philharmonia (Angel SB-3624, 1961), Siegfried Kross Karajan/Berlin (DG 2707 018, 196x), Leonard Burkat Levine/Chicago (RCA ARC2-5002, 1977), Joseph Braunstein Bamberger/Hamburg (Nonesuch HB 73003 (1966), Karl Geiringer Haitink/Vienna State Opera (Philips 6769 055, 196x), H. Kevil Koch/Berlin RSO (Musical Heritage Society 3724/25, William S. Newman Barenboim/London (DG 2707 066, 1979), Walter Neimann Ormandy/Philadelphia (Columbia M2S 686, 1962), Robert Shaw Robert Shaw/RCA Symphony (RCA LM 6004, 1948), Andre Tubeuf and Alan Blyth Karajan/Vienna (EMI 61010, 1988), Robert Pascall Norrington/London Classical Players (EMI 54658, 1993), Steven Ledbetter Shaw/Atlanta (Telarc CD-80092, 1984), Robert Shaw Jessop/Utah (Telarc CD-80501, 1999), Patrick Lang Celibidache/Munich (EMI 56843, 1999), Martin Smith Gardiner/Orchestra Revolutionnaire (Philips 432 140, 1991), Eva Pinter Schuricht/Stuttgart (Hanssler 93.144, 2004), Roger Norrington his CD of the Brahms Symphony # 1 (EMI 54286, 1991). Recordings of Brahmss large-scale choral-orchestral works have to pass two acid tests: first, the balancing of massive structures so that the whole thing hangs together, neither rushing nor dragging;and secondly, the handling of texture, so that listeners can hear individual orchestral-vocal lines and timbres, but also enjoy the seamless fusion of the gigantic collective sound which give such works their meaning. Although Brahms did not point to the precise source, Ochs decided he was referring to Bachs chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott., Moving to the nearby piano, Musgrave played the tune in question, familiar to Lutherans as the hymn If thou but suffer God to guide thee. The comparison was convincing. This first recording of the German Requiem was a propitious match of artists and repertoire. Inserting the Handel aria was clearly a sticking-plaster solution, so Brahms wrote a new fifth movement, for soprano solo and chorus, on the words: Now you mourn, but I will comfort you like a mother. Herbert von Karajan: (1) Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Hans Hotter, Elizabeth Schwartzkopf (1947, EMI; 75'); (2) Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Singverein, Eberhard Waechter, Gundula Janowitz (1964, DG, 76'); (3) Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Singverein, Jos Van Dam, Anna Tomowa-Sintow (1977, Angel LP, 76'). Later, he replaced the first movement Andante with Ziemlich langsam und mit Ausdruck (Quite slow and with expression), suggesting a weightier, more nuanced conception. And yet through the audible haze emerges an exceptional complement to the Toscanini outlook to which we are accustomed. April 10, 1868. One doesnt have time not to do that, she said of his meticulous planning. In the notes to his recording, Gardiner asserts that he attempted to eschew a standard smooth approach in favor of the Baroque devices that Brahms, more than any other composer of his time, studied, cherished and assimilated, including dissonance, cross-rhythms and syncopation, and in particular Schtz's speech- and dance-derived rhythms. The final movement at last delivers a long-deferred prayer for the dead from Revelations 14:13. WebThis book is intended to help those who are contemplating performing or studying the Brahms Requiem. There is no rushing here; this is a measured, patient walk towards reconciliation with death. He was so impressed that he organised a performance for Good Friday, to be conducted by the composer himself. That may have had something to do with family history. Karajan applies his trademark polish, but without lapsing into the slickness that would tend to dominate his later work. My only quibbles are a slightly stodgy pacing of the VI fugue and a bad splice before its final "Where is thy sting." But you must make it clear if youre not absolutely sure so the next generation knows where they stand. He sent her the fourth movement, and described the first and second movements. He has freedom because of the rhythmic discipline.. It comprises seven movements, which together last 65 to 80 minutes, making it Brahms's longest composition. Beautifully balanced and richly recorded, he injects just enough animation to communicate a fully-integrated view of the piece and Fischer-Dieskau's expressive fluidity is wondrous. What impresses me now, as an older man, is seeing Shaw free to float, to make a vocal line. No other piece of music captivated iconic conductor Robert Shaw more than the Brahms Requiem. Others dwell more figuratively on the relationship of text and music, as when regarding the pedal point that accompanies the conclusion of the third movement as symbolizing the firmness of faith. Beyond the expected mixed reaction from pro- and anti-Wagner partisans, for whom Brahms soon would become a symbol of conservative tradition, the performance ended in disaster, when the percussionist apparently mistook a dynamic indication in the score as ff and drowned out the concluding third movement fugue with a deafening pedal point.
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