brahms requiem analysis

Musical illustrations are performed on the violin and piano. The titles of most classical works are merely generic ("Symphony # 1 in C Major"), descriptive ("Scheherazade") or appended by others and often sadly inappropriate (the "Moonlight" Sonata). Modern commentators are able to view the work with greater perspective; writing in the 2001 Grove Dictionary, George Bozarth hails its diversity and historical awareness, ranging from the movement II opening of strict homophony to the elaborate neo-Handelian fugues that close III and VI, and even the IV opening that evokes a Viennese waltz. This human focus, as well In notes for the release, Shaw wrote that he had been torn for 50 years between viewing the German Requiem as a dramatic/narrative work "that might best connect with American performers and audiences in their own language" and a work that was primarily lyric, poetic or contemplative and that would be more revealing in the original. The Cologne Radio Choirs German is remarkably clear, but they still offer an appealingly old-fashioned sound, smoothly eliding between notes and avoiding all sharp edges. A choral introduction of meandering harmonies searches for earthly stability ("We have no continuing city, but we seek one to come"), the baritone raises the prospect of resurrection ("Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not sleep "), the chorus excitedly proclaims victory ("Death, where is thy sting? 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, He adds that Celibidache was inspired by his Zen belief system and by the philosophy of Plotinus, for whom the highest aspiration was a state of profound passivity, in which inner perception transcends logic and rational knowledge. WebThis book is intended to help those who are contemplating performing or studying the Brahms Requiem. It is an ideal set-up for the solo soprano movement that follows. After a long hiatus, the sporadic recording history of the German Requiem resumed in curious fashion in 1955, when two mono LP sets were recorded at the same location by the same orchestra and chorus but released on competing European labels. For his own recording, Shaw tempered the Maestro's fundamental objectivity with a welcome infusion of flexibility and warmth that avoided a feeling of impersonal mechanical rigidity. And as is equally apparent from the timings, the "American" tradition, if indeed there was one, favored far quicker tempos and a feeling of overall vitality. But perhaps the most significant but overlooked word in the title is the first and least prominent: "Ein" ("A"). 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. 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. 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. In Powerpoint style Dr. Ted gives us an introduction to Brahms greatest choral work. The funeral march got Brahms going, Musgrave surmises. But while using the same forces, Lehmann and Kempe exemplify two interpretive extremes within that tradition. Near the end of a life driven by passion and painstaking preparation, conductor Robert Shaw was completing a new English translation of one of his signature pieces, the Brahms Requiem. Even so, while the tenor is fine, the soprano soloist is more grating than comforting, so you may want to invoke historical precedent and emulate the work's second premiere by skipping the fifth movement. WebSDG is happy to present last recording issued from the 2008 Brahms: Roots and Memories tour, in which John Eliot Gardiner and his ensembles explored the music of Johannes Brahms. 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). 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." This becomes evident at the very outset, as Abendroth, like Furtwngler, begins in shadowy mists but then leaves subtlety behind by turning the subtle <> markings of the second set of "selig sinds" at measure 29 into major sonic swells. One doesnt have time not to do that, she said of his meticulous planning. Perhaps to be heard above the timpanist's din, according to Specht the "singers were intent on shouting each other down wildly" and became "distorted into a deafening agglomeration of sound." 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. (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.). He has freedom because of the rhythmic discipline.. WebAn analysis and overview of Johannes Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem. Either people insist upon regarding him as the legitimate successor to Beethoven or they deny him the position of a great master altogether." Brahms had long carried the idea of writing a requiem. The requiem emerged from a decade of turmoil. The second movement combines thoughts of mortality ("All flesh is as grass"), patience, the permanence of God and the joy of redemption. Brahmss choice of texts is central to the Requiems originality. WebAn analysis and overview of Johannes Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem. My only quibbles are a slightly stodgy pacing of the VI fugue and a bad splice before its final "Where is thy sting." A 1983 remake with Shaw's Atlanta forces, which by then he had led for 15 years, boasts a superlative early digital recording and a somewhat broader overall pace that trades the sweep and momentum of the earlier reading for a sense of well-being. He was absorbing musical influences ranging from Wagners operas to Schuberts choral and orchestral works, which were emerging posthumously in Vienna. Also noteworthy was Shaws instruction that singers begin by count singing between pianississimo and pianissimo. The underlying problem may have reflected a dispute over Brahms generally; as Edwin Evans noted in 1912: "no one seems able either to like or to dislike him only a little. 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. Following her separation from Brahmss father, the composers beloved mother Christiane died of a stroke, aged 76, in early 1865. 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. With the sixth movement we reach the dramatic climax. Karajan's first two stereo Berlin Philharmonic remakes (he made yet another with the Vienna Philharmonic (1985, DG), which I haven't heard sorry, but even I have my limits) are quite similar, hovering between profundity and aloof abstraction. Although Brahms had al-ready worked on A German Requiem, his The recorded sound has great immediacy, and the chorus produces a beautifully sustained and richly coloured Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Schwartzkopf (1961, EMI, 69'). In a perverse stroke of fortune, earlier releases of the Toscanini recording were sufficiently blurry so as to preclude perception of the actual words, thus, ironically, relegating the piece largely to musical abstraction and, in so doing, restoring its artistic integrity. A compromise for the premiere was achieved by including the aria I Know that My Redeemer Liveth from Handels Messiah. He feels the touching soprano solo transforms the entire work. The reason for holding it back, he suspects, is that Brahms needed the reassurance of a successful premiere before unveiling this section of the piece. But the catalyst for the decision seems to have been the death of his mother on February 2, 1865. Thomas Allen brings a rugged grief to his solos, while Margaret Prices sound is both richly resonant and angelic. That, in turn, points to the sheer modernism of the work, not only reflecting the emerging secular spirit of the time to probe traditional material for individual expression, but launching the egoistic attitude of personal viewpoints that would come to challenge and even override established faith (as in Benjamin Britten's 1961 War Requiem and Leonard Bernstein's 1971 Mass). This will be between the soloists, the audience, and me. Ratzlaff says the singer next to him vowed he would never perform for Shaw again. The last movement to be added the fifth, in which a solo soprano sings of a mother's comfort is generally attributed to the memory of Brahms' mother, but less as an immediate response to her death than a later tribute. 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. 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. Because she was associated with Shaw for so long, she feels a responsibility to help younger conductors understand why we revere this man so. He solved all the challenges long before the first rehearsal of a piece in a way that made total sense to a singer.. Brahms compiled passages from Luthers Bible for his 1868 Ein deutsches Requiem, texts that focused on comfort for the living rather than judgment and pleas for mercy on behalf of the deceased. All the score's details are heard clearly in an ideal balance without highlighting even the superstar soloists are placed back in the proper perspective, so that Fischer-Dieskau's effortless conviction and Schwartzkopf's sweet modesty are embedded within, rather than dominating, their sections. 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). She related the memory in mid-April to an audience that could well appreciate its poignancy, an intimate group of choral musicians assembled in Atlantas Woodruff Arts Center for the Robert Shaw Centenary Symposium on the Brahms Requiem, presented by Chorus America and hosted by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (ASO). Jones learned from Shaw that this systematic building of discipline and attention to detail are essential, because such efforts can result in an unrivalled beauty and clarity of sound. Most of us would say, Well, well adjust that when we hear it. observes Jones. The harmonic progression and sarabande-like rhythm evoke the Requiems second movement funeral march. While he could be effusive in his praise, says Ratzlaff, he could also be quite sarcastic. 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. 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. He was so impressed that he organised a performance for Good Friday, to be conducted by the composer himself. The stillness and tranquillity of the final movement brings a satisfying sense of closure and healing. He's often described as a "secular humanist" (perhaps synonymous with "agnostic"), but grew up in the Lutheran church and would have had strong sentimental, if not religious, connections to the Many commentators have noted with great admiration Brahms' deep knowledge of the Bible. It begins with the pulse. 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. For answers to those questions, Shaw would have sought someone with the expertise of yet another symposium faculty member, musicologist Michael Musgrave. 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. To Musgrave, the familiar fourth movement, Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen, seems an odd man out. Did Brahms compose it at an earlier time? 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. The Brahms Requiem: Questions for the Conductor Along with questions about his musical and textual motivation, Brahms left several other issues to puzzle 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.. The concert opens with a movement from Beethovens Tenth (yes, Tenth!) Brahms' compilation of texts reflected his own religious tenets. The fourth movement, an interlude reflecting the contentment of living with God, begins and ends simply and serenely, bracketing a double fugue that emerges to expand upon the thought of praising God. 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. As a result, Lehmann leaves an overall impression of implacable sadness, only occasionally relieved by especially prominent brass within the shallow sonics. Vocally, Brahms is as exhausting a piece as a chorus is asked to sing, he told the video interviewer. 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. The title However, Reinthaler pointed out a hitch, namely that none of the movements clearly stated Christian doctrine. The recording is somewhat crude and uncomfortably poised between clear vocals and hazy instrumentals. 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. And yet through the audible haze emerges an exceptional complement to the Toscanini outlook to which we are accustomed. 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. That may have had something to do with family history. Bruno Walter, New York Philharmonic, Westminster Choir, George London, Irmgard Seefried (1956, Odyssey LP, Sony CD, 63'). 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. As Andr Tubeuf quipped, Vienna may have lacked everything at the time except music. 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 sixth movement is the perfect dramatic corollary to the second, Goernes surprisingly tender utterance of We shall be changed leading to tremendously exciting choral singing of Death, where is thy sting?. Indeed, the performers sound like they had something important to prove to assert the intrinsic and abiding musicality of their culture. Her research interests include German song, concert history, 19th-century performance practice and gender studies, with a particular focus on the lives and music of Brahms and the Schumanns. I prefer the earlier one, if only for the massively potent timpani that galvanize the II climaxes (and suggest control-room manipulation drums just can't be that loud!). Balances favor the chorus, which sings with precision and meticulous enunciation, thus tending to suggest an emphasis on mechanics over emotion and presenting more bones than flesh. One of the last vestiges of the vigor that distinguished Walter's long career until the very end (which regrettably is the only portion most classical fans know nowadays from his final Columbia stereo remakes), this magnificent reading is beautifully paced, never rushed but always pressing forward with energy and a strong rhythmic thrust, including overpowering timpani in II, an extraordinary rarity in the entire Walter discography. It was about the music and nothing else. The former is 28 bars long and tonicizes E-flat major. Although each of these recordings is filled with felicitous details, to me the distinctions from their peers are far more subtle than the gulf that separates period and modern renditions of Baroque, classical and even early Romantic works. Never dull but rather purposeful and focused, it flows inexorably. Sometimes he communicated these ideas through letters, many of them included in the 1996 Shaw biography, Dear People. 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. 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 WebThis page lists all sheet music of Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. While Furtwngler's transitions are smooth and imply structural logic, Abendroth's tend to be quicker and sometimes sudden, thus tending to fragment the piece rather than integrating it. The rest of the year was preoccupied with concerts and other compositions, but Brahms returned to the Requiem in early 1866. Try 6 issues for just 9.99 when you subscribe to BBC Music Magazine today! WebThe analysis has been made from the vocal score, with a piano accompaniment arranged from the orchestral parts, as published by G. Schirmer. Aged 32 at the time, his output up to this point had consisted largely of solo piano works and chamber music one notable exception was his First Piano Concerto which, after an underwhelming premiere in Hanover in 1859, had gone on to enjoy a better reception elsewhere. The requiem mass was a venerable musical genre by the time Brahms began to compose his, but Brahms requiem would be unlike any other. Instead of setting the traditional Catholic, Latin text used by Mozart Berlioz, and countless others, Brahms created his own highly personal version from excerpts of the Lutheran Bible and apocrypha. Composers of Latin requiems could inject themselves only partially into the final product, as each section had to illustrate, if not advance, the dogmatic progression as well as the prescribed wording of each required section a mournful Requiem aeternam, a fiery Dies irae, a somber Rex tremendae, a fearful Lacrymosa, a comforting Agnus Dei, etc. WebVince Sheehan explores the themes, structure and text of this choral masterpiece. Karajan applies his trademark polish, but without lapsing into the slickness that would tend to dominate his later work. WebTo make a thorough study of these lessons is to became a better teacher or student, and also to became a more discerning musician. Far more successful was the composer's April 10, 1868 Bremen performance of a six-movement version. The primary stimulus appears to have come with Schumann's untimely death in 1856. In the meantime, in addition to isolated movements, two exceptional concerts had been recorded, although not released at the time. Brahms responded that hed deliberately omitted such passages. A sort of German Requiem this was the unformed compositional plan that the 32-year-old Brahms announced to his friend Clara Schumann in a letter 1865. Each movement is appreciably slower, often strikingly so the opening sprawls to 1210 compared to 925 in his 1943 NBC broadcast, and the finale to 1305 vs. 940 in 1943. For Shaw, rehearsal time was precious. The performance was a huge success for Dietrich, it was simply overwhelming and Brahms was celebrated afterwards at a banquet. (Even so, Paul Minear reconciles the underlying message of Brahms' approach with fundamental Christian tradition, which integrates suffering (the Passion) with joy (the Resurrection) and stresses the need to temper our universal fear of death through faith in something greater than the mortal self.) 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. WebBrahms chose the texts that were dearest to him. WebRather like one of the best contemporary requiems, that of Classic FM's erstwhile Composer in Residence Howard Goodall, A German Requiem is not primarily a Mass for the dead. In keeping with the two soloists' respective functions, the baritone aptly quakes with excitement, while the soprano is serene. The Wagnerians were telling you what the future was; Brahms was hobnobbing with scholars, unearthing music nobody knew. Musgrave dismisses the claim of Brahmss first biographer, Max Kalbeck, that the Requiem began as a cantata, instead favoring a somewhat related explanation from German conductor Siegfried Ochs. The second movement is shapelessly slow; the fourth treacly and muffled. While conductors views often evolve over time, at first it seems hard to reconcile such radically different perspectives arising within a mere six years. 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. ], Willem Mengelberg, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam Toonkunst Choir, Max Kloos, Jo Vincent (1940, Turnabout LP, 65'). 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. He was the most significant figure in our profession for 40 years.. Johannes rushed home but was too late to see her. Yet even in the 20th century, Specht castigated its fugues as "petrification of rough-hewn themes" and as "music for the eyes" that doesn't move the soul, even while conceding that "never before had the departed been sung to rest with a lullaby of such solemnity and consoling beauty." For many, this is the expressive heart of the work, recalling Brahmss own tragic loss. At a slow and patient 79 minutes, time seems suspended in a rarified atmosphere of deep spirituality. One of the last sections they worried over was the final movement: Blessed are the dead that they rest now from their labors and that their works follow after them. To this day, Frink cant listen to those words and that music without thinking of Shaw. Brahmss friend Albert Dietrich sent the score to the organist of Bremen Cathedral, Karl Reinthaler. Critics, though, were less enchanted, often tempering admiration of its universal message and its integration of old and new musical elements with concern over its deliberately attenuated range and overriding sobriety. Abandoning the conventional Latin liturgy, he used his intimate knowledge of scripture to select 15 passages from the German Bible and the Apocrypha that would express his own beliefs. As summarized by Michael Murgrove, the overall focus of the work is on comfort, hope, reassurance and reward for personal effort rather than the judgment, vengeance, sacrifice and overt references to Christian symbolism that characterize the Latin requiem mass. 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. It is both curious and disturbing that such an accessible work had to wait until 1947 for its first studio recordings clearly a sign of producers' low confidence in its commercial prospects. Maurice Durufl's Requiem: the best recordings, Britten's War Requiem: the story of how Britten came to compose his most famous piece. Craig Jessop, Utah Symphony, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Nathan Gunn, Janice Chadler (1999, Telarc; 69').

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