Concert Program: Brahms Requiem

Ein Deutches Requiem nach Worten den heiligen Schrift, op. 45

Johannes Brahms 1833-1897

ON A HISTORICAL NOTE

As choral war-horses go “A German Requiem On Words of the Holy Scripture” by Johannes Brahms isn’t ridden often by the San Diego Master Chorale. We’ve done it only 7 times during our 64 years, but it stays with you, both in the head and in the heart. A German Requiem is the composition that brought Brahms his first major triumph and led to recognition of his talent outside the German-speaking countries.

This work is not a traditional Mass for the Dead with the horrors of the Dies Irae — God’s wrath and hell’s bells. It is instead, music about death contained in a personal message of consolation and hope for the living. It is “German” because rather than using the Catholic Latin liturgy, the composer used passages from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha.*

Though Brahms was a “freethinker,” a humanist (he was a lapsed Lutheran – Dvořák said Brahms “believes in nothing!”), he was certainly familiar with the Bible and read it every day. He chose the texts himself. After it’s premier, Brahms wrote that he preferred the name of his Requiem to be “Ein menschliches Requiem,” A Human Requiem.

The Requiem begins, not with prayers for the dead, (the dead are not mentioned until the 6^th movement), but with concern for the bereaved, “Blessed are they that mourn,” and concludes with “Blessed are the dead.” Compassion and contemplation come full circle to encompass the promise of the future for the living and the dead. In the liturgy, this would be the Resurrection but though God/the Lord are invoked, there are no references to Christ or the Passion in the German Requiem, even though it is traditionally a favorite for Lenten or Easter presentations. Interestingly, the Catholic Mass for the dead begins and ends with the same word, ‘Requiem’—rest; Brahms uses the same word ‘Selig’—blessed, to begin and end his Requiem.

Why did a non-believer write a piece of music with a Christian title? The answer involves 2 deaths. In 1853 the 20-year-old Brahms traveled to Düsseldorf to meet the composer, Robert Schumann. Brahms lived with the composer, his wife, Clara – a fine pianist – and their 6 children for a month (a 7th child was born later – when did she have time to practice the piano?) The Schumann’s and Brahms became very close friends. More than that, Schumann became a mentor to Brahms, enthusiastically championing the young composer calling him a “genius” and “savior of German music;” and Johannes fell in love with Clara. Over the next few years the elder composer became increasingly unstable mentally and died of pneumonia in a mental institution in 1856.  Scholars now think he was bipolar or schizophrenic with perhaps syphilis also a factor. He was 46. Brahms, who was a great support to Clara and her family during her husband’s decline, had begun writing some music to honor his friend and to work through his own grief. That music was ultimately set aside but was taken up again years later when Brahms’ mother, who was very dear to him, died in 1865.

There is much conjecture as to how that music morphed into a Requiem. Johannes had tinkered with setting the music as a cantata or symphony but finally decided on a “kind of German requiem,” one done his way with an homage to the Baroque masters, especially his beloved Bach. It would be tied together by a three-note motif: a third followed by a half step in the same direction (i.e. “Selig sind” – F/A/B-flat).  He incorporated the piano music into the second movement of a six-movement Requiem for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, finishing it by 1867. Years later he was gratified to find out that Schumann had also thought of writing a German Requiem.

Brahms conducted the first performance of his Requiem on Good Friday, 1868, in the Bremen Cathedral. Schumann’s widow, Clara, now a renowned concert pianist, was among the audience in the packed building. She and Brahms remained devoted friends all their lives. Due to the uncertain nature of the text and knowing that Brahms was probably an agnostic, the producer of the concert impressed upon the composer that some overtly religious music needed to be included in the program.  Ultimately, Handel’s aria “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” was inserted after movement 4, and portions of the St. Matthew Passion, and other Bach pieces were played so there would be no mistaking the work’s spiritual intent (secular concerts during Lent were verboten). 

Later that same year, Brahms wrote the soprano solo, inserted as the fifth movement, in remembrance of his mother. In that movement the choir, accompanying the soloist, quietly repeats the same phrase throughout the movement: “As one whom his mother comforted, so will I comfort you.”  The final seven-movement German Requiem we know today had its premier February 16, 1869, in Cologne to great acclaim. It was presented two days later in Leipzig. Arch-conservative Leipzig had a little trouble warming to the work: the Bach-like fugues were, of course, approved of, but the “mystical and contemplative” text caused some consternation.  But then that town had always been a tough nut for Brahms to crack. Nevertheless, the existence of a monumental new choral work by Brahms, Ein Deutches Requiem, quickly spread. The public wanted to hear the piece. Although this magnificent music was deemed “difficult,” there were 11 performances of it in Germany during its first year.

After the 1869 premier at his canny publisher’s request, Brahms wrote a reduction for piano 4-hands, a full orchestral reduction, not just a simple accompaniment. Since it included the vocal line, it could be played at home or presented for intimate concerts without the chorus and soloists. That arrangement, now called the “London Version” (Londoner Fassung), was used in 1871 for a private concert, with the chorus and soloists singing in English, at Sir Henry Thompson’s house on Wimpole Street in London. Lady Thompson was one of pianists and an early collaborator of Brahms conducted. The official London premier of the orchestral 7-movement Requiem didn’t occur until 1873. It received mostly positive reviews: choral music was very popular in England. After it was presented again in 1876, Londoners realized it was truly a masterpiece but it needed better trained singers to handle the German counterpoint. Enter the London Bach Choir. Formed that same year to sing the Mass in B minor, the Choir tackled the Brahms and went on to present it many times, establishing the piece as a Victorian favorite. 

When the Requiem was first performed in the US (New York Oratorio Society) in 1877, word of the “grandeur and earnestness” of the work came with it. However, there were still critical contradictions: it was praised as being scholarly” (referring to the baroque and classical influences) and “its length and monotonousness are such that it is scarcely likely to impress any but students.” Audiences in Boston and Chicago heard it in 1888 where the “hand of a skilled musician” was noted, but “its vagueness and fragmentary themes do not offer much satisfaction.” Really?

It is hard to believe now, but in spite of the acceptance of the craftsmanship involved in writing such a masterful and thoughtful work, the piece continued to be criticized into the 20^th century.  Catholic Europe objected to the Requiem’s Protestant fervor and the non-liturgical text. (How could it be fervent but yet monotonous?) It was also argued that it was too religious for the concert hall, and conversely, that it was too secular for a church.  Still other critics found the music “harmonically ambivalent”- those strange modulations, and “nearly untonal” in some passages, which were either favorable qualities or bad ones depending on the reviewer’s affinities. And, oh, boy, were there affinities.

During the mid-late 19^th century many in the music world took sides, favoring either classical: the “Brahmsians,” or neo-German: the “Wagnerites.” The devotees of Richard Wagner and Liszt found fault with the music of Brahms and his ilk, calling it old- fashioned (all that counterpoint) and academic (no Sturm und Drang). One Wagnerite compared the music of Brahms to a “sleeping powder for weak nerves.” The Requiem was especially singled out. George Bernard Shaw, one of the most fascinating music critics ever, had no good words for the piece or Brahms in general: “There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.” Wagner himself wrote that when his generation died “we will want no German Requiem to be played to our ashes.” Privately, many Brahmsians, even Brahms himself, found some merit in Wagner’s music. It was Wagner’s blatantly anti-Semitic writings they mostly objected to.

So, who won this musical ping-pong game? Well, we don’t have 3 W’s, do we, but we do have the 3 B’s. The eminent conductor, Han von Bülow, a former Wagnerite, added Brahms as a 3^rd B. (replacing Berlioz). Von B’s enthusiasm for Wagner took a nosedive when Wagner stole the conductor’s wife, Cosima. To add insult to injury, Cosima was the daughter of List. Hell hath no fury like a conductor scorned.

Actually, the earliest critical fires lit by the Requiem started in 1867, just after the 6-movement work was completed. In Vienna, there had been a particularly disastrous preview concert of the first three movements. Insufficient rehearsal time resulted in a “lackluster” performance, and auditions for a new timpanist. There was no organ that evening for the long-held pedal point in the third movement, so the kettledrum carried the sustained bass line. The percussionist misunderstood the directions – he pounded away fortissimo for the whole fugue, totally swamping the rest of the music. Since the choir always has the best seat in the house, can’t you just imagine the conductor’s signals – histrionics is probably more like it – as he tried to conduct a fugue and at the same time get someone to kill that verdammt drummer. The audience was said to be “shocked and bewildered” – they hissed and booed. Brahms’ feelings were not recorded.

San Diego Master Chorale Performances

Thank goodness, our performances have had happier outcomes – and, other than noting a few instances of vocal fatigue, diction and cohesiveness problems (the 3^rd movement fugue), the reviews have been very positive. The public still loves this piece. We first performed the German Requiem in March 1969, with the San Diego Symphony Zoltan Rosznyai conducting in the cavernous Civic Theatre. The San Diego Symphonic Chorale (our original name) was joined by the San Diego State Aztec Concert Chorus to make a choir of 250, which might have accounted for the sloppy diction mentioned in the review. 

Maestro Peter Eros next conducted the SD Symphony and SDMC (then in our second season with our new name) in April 1980 at the Civic Theatre, with Lorna Hayward as the soprano soloist. (SDSO moved to Symphony Hall in the mid 1980’s). Late in 1986, we previewed the 4^th and 6^th movements in a “Sampler” concert to advertise our upcoming season, then sang the full Requiem to a sold-out house at the First Presbyterian Church the following April, 1987. Our Music Director, Frank Almond, conducted – he told us to sing the German with a German accent – that actually helped! Robert Plimpton was at the organ admirably pretending with ten fingers and two feet to be a symphony orchestra. There was one teensy problem in that concert. Sometime in the first half, one soprano sang a note where Brahms didn’t write one. Most of us heard it and Frank certainly did. His head whipped around and every soprano felt impaled on his eyeballs (image courtesy of Kay Rouillard, a long time soprano). As we filed off at intermission, Frank, planted at the doorway, hissed at each soprano, “Who was it? Who did it?”– “Oh, Frank, it came from the back”, “Uh, it was someone in front.” Nobody squealed. But we were traumatized! And that concert was recorded. It was one of our first “official” concert recordings by WalkerVision – the owners, Pat and Leanne Walker were long-time Chorale members at the time. We all got a copy of the recording, but if the voice was recognized, no one ever told Frank. (Did he figure it out?) 

Our next performance was March 1992 at Copley Symphony Hall with SDSO’s Yoav Talmi conducting.  It was part of Maestro Talmi’s ambitious Requiem cycle, which kept us happily busy for a few years doing all the A-listers (Fauré, Mozart, Verdi, Cherubini – Cherubini?)  A legato line sounded like mush in that venue before the stage was remodeled in wood, so we were admonished to be extra careful articulating the German. Talmi was particularly demanding in his use of messa di voce, which he translated as “hairpins.” During the piano rehearsal he would stop us, make two sideways V’s with his fingers, we’d mark our music, then we’d go on: stopping, marking, starting. Every note of two or more beats seemed to need those hairpins. By the end of the rehearsal our music looked like chickens had been walking all over it. For this performance set a reviewer noted that the tenors rather pooped out in the 6^th movement (“seemed a little winded,” to be exact). They probably didn’t get their Venti-add-a-shot’s that morning, and we did have to stand for the whole 1½-hour performance. Janet Parry was the soprano; Jubilant Sykes was the thrilling baritone soloist.

Our 2002 performance, and a very exciting performance it was, of the Brahms Requiem was in early February when we teamed up with the La Jolla Symphony Chorus – there were at least 140 singers on the stage of Copley, Jung-Ho Pak conducting. It was to be our last SD Symphony concert with this dynamic young man who was in his final season as artistic director of the Symphony. The soprano soloist was the ethereal Virginia Sublett, who was a San Diego star. Jung-Ho knew exactly what he wanted, “the text is number one” and he presented us us two with pages of printed notes. Pak considered this work chamber music, and asked us to approach it “with the same vocal intensity and clarity as lieder.” A month before the concert we had two or three weeks of double rehearsals (Monday at UCSD, Tues at First United Methodist Church) giving the two choirs a chance to develop a cohesive sound. At one point there must have been a wobble problem in the first movement. Pak, ever the nice guy, gently admonished us, “We tend to use vibrato like ketchup, we put it on everything.” We gratefully remained seated while singing the 5th movement. That concert was especially meaningful to Chorale members because alto Judy Mowers had recently lost her mother (who along with her dad were founding members of the Chorale). We had a personal reason to be singing this supportive and comforting requiem.

San Diego Master Chorale Music Director, Gary McKercher prepared us to sing the Brahms German Requiem with Maestro Jahja Ling and the San Diego Symphony for concerts in March 2009. Gary emphasized the expressiveness of the requiem, paying particular attention to the suspensions. (Funny how those suspensions seemed to be exactly where Talmi put his hairpins back in 1992!) Maestro Ling told us that when Brahms writes in hairpins, it’s for espressivo; when the words cresc. or dim. appear, then he wants a gradual sound change.

Lucky for us Brahms wrote that piano duo arrangement of his requiem. We sang the “London Version” at two venues in October of 2018, with our guy, Bryan Verhoye and Jessie Chang at the pianos, John Russell conducting. John really emphasized the German diction – and he let us sit for the 5^th movement, thank goodness. We sang it at Point Loma Presbyterian Church and the next week at the First Presbyterian Church. Chorale members Tatiana James and Matt Fallesen were the soloists. And our conductor of so many thrilling symphony concerts, Maestro Jahja Ling, now the SDSO Conductor Laureate (who is also the husband of pianist Jessie Chang), presented a pre-concert talk. There was a reception after the concerts. Ms Chang used her own concert grand for both performances – and yes, it had to be schlepped to both venues, very carefully!

Starting in March 2020 Covid mandates shut down live performances by the Chorale for what came to be14 months. But the creative spirit and the singers’ need to sing could not be squelched so the Chorale embraced technology.  Three free Virtual Zoom Sing-alongs were hosted, then 6 virtual online performances (mostly videos of former concerts) on a subscription basis. The first sing-along was the Fauré Requiem, second was the Brahms German Requiem, and the third Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. For the Brahms the October 2018 two-piano video was used as the guide recording and John presented a thoughtful discussion of the music. It was a bittersweet experience for all.  

This month the London Version will again be presented, live, with Bryan Verhoye and Jessie Chang (and her piano) reprising their virtuosity under John’s direction. There will be two concerts at Point Loma Presbyterian. Carron Martin, soprano, and Matthew Fallesen, baritone, both Chorale members will be the soloists, with guest artist, Heather Barclay, on timpani.

Once more we cherish the rich musical and spiritual rewards this piece brings us. A

German Requiem has been called the “Requiem for the rest of us” and is arguably the one we would like to have sung in our memory, no matter what Wagner thinks. 

For the inquiring mind, Wikipedia has a chart of which Bible passages are used in the piece and where. 

— Patricia Hay, San Diego Master Chorale Historian (and former SDMC Soprano)