The first performance of the «German Requiem» in its definitive seven-part version took place on February 18, 1869, at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, conducted by Carl Reinecke: it was a tremendous success, comparable to what had happened on April 10 (Good Friday) of the previous year in Bremen Cathedral during the work’s premiere (conducted by Brahms himself), in a version still lacking the movement composed the following summer, which would be included in the score as the fifth piece (the initial three pieces, performed in Vienna on December 1, 1867, and immediately subjected to some revisions, had met a negative response). This achievement was the first Brahms had obtained with a large-scale work, notably demanding both in its writing and in its expressive and formal intentions; also of great importance for his personal history as a composer, as it managed to balance the dramatic failure, encountered about a decade earlier at the same Gewandhaus, of the «Concerto Op. 15» for piano and orchestra. That composition, in contrast to the «Requiem», limits the formal and stylistic scope of Brahms’s work before his full maturity: it symbolizes, beyond its undeniable artistic value, the unfortunate first encounter of the musician with the grand symphonic form.

In fact, in Brahms’s catalog, the «Concerto Op. 15» remains the only major symphonic work before the «Requiem»: until 1873, the year of the «Variations on a Theme by Haydn», Brahms would not approach the large orchestra again, at least publicly, except to combine it with chorus and solo voices in works such as the «German Requiem» and, immediately following, the cantata «Rinaldo», the «Rhapsody» for contralto and male chorus, the «Song of Destiny» («Schicksalslied»), and the «Triumph Song» («Triumphlied») (numbered respectively as works 50, 53, 54, 55). This was not because the lack of public and critical success had in any way intimidated Brahms; the causes were entirely internal, and although the decade in which the «Requiem» was conceived and realized saw other renunciations by the composer, these were clear signs of a choice that was both a polemical stance and a moral necessity. Postponing the symphonic endeavor to a perhaps very distant future, Brahms now embarked on a path akin to vows of chastity and poverty—an arduous and stubborn patience maintained for decades: a long journey toward a goal that, truly, was «buscando el levante por el poniente» (seeking the east through the west)—that is, reaching the symphony through quartets, quintets, etc.—in order to finally express a word that was difficult and hard-won, perhaps definitive, and no longer comparable unless through a radical change of perspectives and languages, moral and technical worlds; turning the page (and moving closer to the turn of the century, above all).

It was the obsession of the century—the problem of form: the sonata, pushed by Beethoven to structural ruptures and fantastical, at least disconcerting, horizons, seemed to have become for the Romantics an inheritance too costly to maintain, a hot chestnut that inevitably burned the fingers. Especially when approaching the form within the noblest but most problematic genre of the symphony; where the debt to great historical precedents was complemented by the risk of externalizing, descriptive, and coloristic deviations within the almost unlimited alchemy of orchestral timbres of the nineteenth century. Brahms, just over twenty, faced an inner crisis that would determine the consistent direction of his next two decades: because it was from the ashes of a long-considered and painfully aborted symphony in D minor that the «Concerto Op. 15» was born through difficult transformations, once it was acknowledged that the original intention was unfeasible. Neither of his two orchestral works from those years—the «Serenades» Op. 11 and 16—despite their artistic freshness, succeeded in confirming Brahms’s pursuit of a symphonic path; this was postponed to better times, gradually prepared through a determined, courageous slow process of mastering the legacy of the classics (a challenge also inspired by Schumann’s advice), narrowing his focus to chamber music with strict orchestral forces. Thus, in these years, the Brahmsian orchestra was silent; the piano, however, which after the four experiments of the 1850s had abandoned the sonata forever, explored with prophetic repetitions the realm of variation (whose path would be sublimated, with the finale of the «Fourth», into the Brahmsian symphonic journey).

But while Brahms pursued and perfected mastery of form under the banner of classicism in chamber music, he also developed and increasingly characterized his vocal language: where it was easier for him to cultivate, continue, exploit, and expand the two lexical streams that so extensively informed nearly every page of his work—the choral and the «Lied». It is within this dimension that the melodic and harmonic foundation of the «German Requiem» is elaborated: a choice made quite naturally, just as Brahms had naturally embraced the ideological cause which, through gross misunderstandings by his opponents—and not less by certain supporters (including the great Hanslick)—would later be accused or contribute to being labeled «reactionary», and which is certainly linked to those same linguistic orientations in more ways than one.

The 1860s open for Brahms with a «public» gesture: signing a manifesto against the «Neoclassical» school, led by Liszt, the Liszt of the great Romantic poems, where formal elaboration yields to the urgency of expression, and more conspicuously to the descriptive temptation of the literary «program»; but also Liszt who dissolves, or tempers, religious emotion in expansive sacred and choral compositions, imbued with a Catholic mysticism that is today as suggestive as ever—perhaps for Brahms, at the time, somewhat disagreeable, even indecent, like the clerical vestments the Hungarian later sought in Rome amid sins and Counter-Reformation influences, a city that was not only the city of the Popes but also preparing to become the theater of D’Annunzio’s youthful exploits (it is not so paradoxical, in hindsight, that Brahms might have appreciated Verdi’s «Mass» rather than the «Catholicism» of D’Annunzio). The 1860s are, above all, the years of «Tristan»: and almost all the Romantic masters had disappeared from the scene, including Robert Schumann, who had watched over Brahms’s youth for a few crucial years. The intrusive theatricality, whatever its content, combined with the exhausted chromatic tension of the Tristan chord, perhaps even a religious feeling that inevitably moved toward the decadent sensuality of «Parsifal»: this was the enemy to be defeated, or something from which to distinguish oneself, in order to be oneself. «Is it not possible to resist this influence of the present, which I feel to be harmful, and not betray the music that I need and want to save from time? Not the music imposed by others, but that which my taste, my conscience, and my deep will aspire to?»

For Brahms, as for any man of the nineteenth century, individual identity was also awareness of the nation’s identity—specifically the German one—which, at its core, was inseparable from his profound, natural humanism, both in music and elsewhere, from the continuity of tradition. And tradition, in this sense, meant—perhaps surpassing Beethoven, Bach, and Handel—Heinrich Schütz’s a cappella polyphony, the stern morality of three centuries of the Reformation, nourished by counterpoint and chorale; Brahms, the «progressive», as the father of radical music of our century would call him, now aims to «save himself from time», firmly grounded in a language consecrated by history, so as to later, without aesthetic crusades or philosophical ambitions, point out to music organizational principles still unexplored, capable of germinating into a language of unpredictable novelty in the future. Just as Brahms prepares to master the sublime domain of form following the trail of Viennese classicism, he also enthusiastically follows the Bach Renaissance and the Handel Renaissance, devouring as they are published the volumes of the complete editions of these two masters, following in the eager and joyful return to the sources the trail of the great pioneer of this movement, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (who, a quarter-century earlier, had laid the groundwork for what might be considered the most authoritative predecessor of the «German Requiem», the «Symphony-Cantata on Words of Holy Scripture» titled «Lobgesang»).

The spirit of the «Requiem», like Mendelssohn’s work, openly recalls the German Protestant civilization. In the title, which needs no comment; in the choice of text, also assembled «from words of Holy Scripture», which besides being the word of God, also constitutes a milestone—in the German version of Martin Luther—of the linguistic unification of the nation; in the religious meanings highlighted by the biblical fragments, proposing meditations on death and eternal salvation—not in a narrow confessional sense but rooted in Protestant theology; and in the stylistic features of the musical fabric, which at first listen can be easily linked to the cultural interests and artistic orientations previously mentioned, with clear evidence of expressive valences in the very use of certain «forms» from history (for example, the fugues, always placed as a resolutive, even cathartic, climax of the tension built in certain sections of the «Requiem»). What Brahms’s work seems to borrow only minimally from ideal masters of the past is the dramatic quality that, sublimated and entirely free from theatrical exteriorities, animates many pages of Handel’s oratorios and Bach’s Passions, and that periodically reappears in Mendelssohn: morality, the philosophy of music so coherently guiding Brahms’s entire creative path, as well as keeping him at a respectful, but disdainful distance from the theater—this left only a faint trace of the spirit of the oratorio, despite his love for the masterpieces of the past. In fact, the «German Requiem» essentially advocates a «liturgical» dimension, albeit spontaneously secular: purely ideal, as the Reformation tradition conceives, with music not as «sacred» outside the assembly’s chant, and with the very concept of liturgy reduced to an uncodified event, secondary in role.

The first section of the «Requiem» functions almost as a «Introït», with its instrumentation—excluding violins—immediately effective in setting the emotional climate of the movement; the discreet organ intervention, planned «ad libitum» as a simple doubling of the basses rather than to support grandiose sound effects, emphasizes the «liturgical» sense of this part. One should remember this when, in the final movement of the score, the same musical material will reappear with words quite similar to these. The vocal line of this first piece dissolves the essentially homorhythmic, chorale-like movement of the opening verse into a more fluid discourse, with the words «Die mit Tränen…» (Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts), while the orchestral accompaniment—mainly supported by the strings (double basses, three cellos, violas)—and the contrapuntal imitative play culminate in a reprise of the initial words «Selig sind…» (Blessed are…), which is the closing phrase.

The second section, perhaps the most popular part of the «Requiem», uses not casually a remnant of Brahms’s youthful symphony, the Scherzo, which, excised from the concerto form, appears at the beginning of this movement; its funeral character, almost march-like despite the ternary rhythm, derives also from the transposition into the minor key—without excessive modifications—of the same melodic motif introduced earlier in the work’s first movement, entrusted to subsequent string interventions: a fragment of the famous hymn «Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten» («Who only lets the dear God govern»), which the chorus overlays on the repetition of the thematic idea already presented by the orchestra alone (expanded with brass—tuba included—and driven by Beethovenian triplets in the timpani, enriched by an arpa in a non-decorative role). Raised to an extremely expressive crescendo, the first part of the scherzo gives way to a contrasting section, where the dark march evolves into a more cheerful, almost Lied-like, flowing discourse, with the major mode gaining in lightness thanks to the transparency of the instrumentation. A sudden ascent, like a brief choral recitative, opens the way to a monumental fugue: «Aber des Herrn Wort… – Die Erlöseten…» (But the word of the Lord endures forever. And those who suffer shall be redeemed). Within this vigorous contrapuntal fabric, unexpected rhythmic and harmonic «stagnations»—typical of Brahms—intrude, until the final rallentando on the words «Ewige Freude» (Eternal joy).

A responsorial episode, assigned to the solo baritone and the choir, opens the third part: the theme is the fleeting nature of human life. The sober expressiveness of the soloist’s invocation is contrasted by a more fiery element—the orchestra’s reprise of a secondary cell of the initial motif, a simple bloom transformed almost into a piercing «memento mori». An interrogative question from the soloist («But now, Lord, how can I find comfort?») inevitably receives an answer in another broad choral fugue («My hope is in you»). The fourth chorus, which Brahms himself had, during the composition, decided to omit—at least temporarily—from his friend Joachim’s judgment, considering it «the weakest part», is actually a very delicate interlude, essential in its clear simplicity to restore balance after the ambitious structures of the previous sections, yet once again not neglecting the contrapuntal culmination. This connects to the character of the next movement, Brahms’s last work: a «Lied» for solo soprano, where the tender expressiveness of the simple melodic line, combined with the very light tint of the instrumentation, allows for sudden recursions, where the mode change from major to minor even recalls certain early Lied-like writing of Mahler.

The «German Requiem» approaches its conclusion with the sixth movement, the most ambitious and grandiose, structured into three sections. In the first, a recitative—between ecclesiastical and Bachian—performed by the baritone prepares, together with the urgent interventions of the chorus, the fiery sonorities of what can be judged as the «Dies irae» of this work, which will then settle into a long fugue, openly recalling Bach’s teaching. The closing arrives in a pacifying manner with the seventh chorus, which, echoing the atmosphere of the first movement, seals—through the pizzicatos of the strings and the «Elisie» strokes of the harp and winds—the faith in the bliss of death.

Daniele Spini