The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Johannes Brahms · Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift, Op. 45 · seven movements for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra, with organ ad libitum · in German: verses chosen and ordered by Brahms from Luther’s Bible · about 66 to 75 minutes in performance
Mode
Concert requiem on scripture chosen by the composer; consolation in place of liturgy, in chorale, march, psalm and fugue
Mythos
Seed, grass and harvest: death as a sowing; the pilgrim with no lasting city; the mother who comforts; the last trumpet
Phase
Seven movements in an arch, from mourning to the blessed dead; F major to F major, the keys stepping in mirror round a semitone at the centre
Presentation
Concert music; seven movements for soprano and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra, organ ad libitum, setting verses from eleven books of Luther’s Bible
Register
From divided low strings without violins to the last trumpet; inward and choral, three times turned to counterpoint
Scale
One mourner, one man at his end, all flesh and the dead; no one named; about seventy minutes
Governing Proposition
Seven movements of scripture, chosen and ordered by the composer from the whole Bible, run from a blessing on those who mourn to a blessing on the dead, and end where they began. The wager of the work is that a requiem belongs to the living: that grief is a sowing and not an end, and that the blessing on the mourner and the blessing on the dead are one blessing.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The requiem begins without its brightest voices. Over a low F the lower strings, divided, move slowly, and the violins are silent; they take no part in the first movement at all. The chorus enters quietly, and its first word is “Selig”, blessed: “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet werden”
“Blessed are they who bear sorrow, for they shall be comforted.” The Latin Mass for the dead begins by asking rest for the souls of the departed. This work begins with the living, and with the one who grieves for them. The words are the beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount, words of Jesus, and the work does not say whose they are.
The second text comes from the Psalms, and it turns grief into a figure the whole work will grow from: “Die mit Tränen säen, werden mit Freuden ernten”
“Those who sow with tears shall reap with joy.” The psalm goes on to the one who goes out weeping with precious seed and comes home with sheaves. Sorrow is not an end but a sowing, and something will be gathered from it. At the close of the movement the harps enter for the first time, on the promise of comfort, and the music settles in F major. The darkness of the opening was made by taking the violins away; the comfort is made by adding the harps.
The plan of the whole is set by what Brahms chose. He drew sixteen passages, by one count, from eleven books of Luther’s Bible, nine from the New Testament, five from the Psalms and Isaiah, two from the Apocrypha, and ordered them himself. There are seven movements, and they stand as an arch. The first and the last open on the same word and stand in the same key; the keys between step up by a fourth, a third, a semitone, a third and a fourth, and a fourth brings the last back to F. The step at the centre is the smallest, and the movement at the centre is the shortest. The name of Christ appears nowhere in the text.
Movement II
The second movement is a funeral march, and it is in three. It is slow, in B flat minor, and the chorus sings it softly at first: “Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras”
“For all flesh, it is as grass.” The verse from the first letter of Peter goes on to the glory of man as the flower of the grass, and the grass withering, and the flower falling. The march is heard a second time with the full force of chorus and orchestra, and the timpani. It is a march that cannot be marched to: a dirge in triple time.
Between its statements comes a different counsel, from the letter of James: be patient, as the farmer is patient, who waits for the precious fruit of the earth until he receives the early and the late rain. The figure from the first movement returns in a new form. The sower of the psalm wept; the farmer here waits. Then the march comes back, at length, as mortality comes back after patience.
The break comes on a single verse. Peter’s letter, which said that all flesh is grass, goes on, and the music turns to B flat major: “Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit”
“But the word of the Lord endures in eternity.” A verse of Isaiah follows, the ransomed of the Lord returning to Zion with joy, and pain and sighing fled, and the movement ends in a contrapuntal close, the lament broken by an answer in many voices. It is the first of three such closes. The pattern the work will repeat has been stated: grief, and within the same movement an answer drawn from the promise of the text.
Movement III
The third movement gives the work its first single voice. In D minor the baritone asks what the psalmist asked: “Herr, lehre doch mich, daß ein Ende mit mir haben muß”
“Lord, teach me that there must be an end of me.” It is the most personal sentence in the work, and the only place where a man asks about his own death rather than the deaths of others. Baritone and chorus carry the psalm on to the vanity of a life: a man heaps up riches and cannot know who will gather them.
The movement gathers toward three words: “Ich hoffe auf dich”
“I hope in you.” What follows is a verse from the Wisdom of Solomon, in the Apocrypha: “Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand, und keine Qual rühret sie an”
“The souls of the righteous are in God’s hand, and no torment touches them.” Brahms sets it as a fugue in D major, and under the whole length of the fugue the bass holds a single D. The voices enter and move; the D does not.
The form says what the verse says. The souls are held, and the note that holds them is held. The first three movements were given in Vienna on 1 December 1867, under Johann Herbeck, and the pedal, by the reports, was played so loudly that it covered the fugue it was meant to bear. The movement was hissed. The accounts differ in their details, and the difficulty they record is real: a fugue in several voices over one unmoving note is hard to balance. It is the second of the three contrapuntal closes, and the one in which the procedure is the meaning.
Movement IV
At the centre of the arch stands the shortest movement, a setting of the psalm of longing for God’s house. It moves gently in three, in E flat major, a semitone above the D on which the third movement ended: “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen, Herr Zebaoth!”
“How lovely are your dwellings, Lord of hosts!” The psalm longs for the house of the Lord. There is no dread in it. The work places its one picture of rest without strain where the arch turns, between the man who asked to know his end and the mourner who will be consoled.
On Good Friday, 10 April 1868, the work was given in Bremen Cathedral under Brahms, with Julius Stockhausen as baritone. It had six movements then, and it was heard as whole. Music by other composers was sung in the same performance; it belonged to that performance and not to the work. The present fifth movement did not yet exist. Brahms wrote it in 1868, after Bremen, and the complete seven movements were first heard at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 18 February 1869, under Carl Reinecke. Brahms was thirty-five.
The added movement is in G major, and it is the only one with a soprano. Her words are those of Jesus in John’s Gospel, unnamed again: the disciples have sorrow now, but he will see them again, and their hearts will rejoice. Against her line the chorus sings, in long note values, a verse of Isaiah: “Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seine Mutter tröstet”
“I will comfort you, as a man is comforted by his mother.” A verse of Sirach speaks of a little toil and great comfort found. The movement answers the third, a solo voice for a solo voice, and gives the work its one image of comfort that is personal.
Movement V
The sixth movement begins as a pilgrimage, the baritone and chorus in C minor: “Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt, sondern die zukünftige suchen wir”
“For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one to come.” Then the baritone tells a mystery from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, that we shall all be changed at the last trumpet, and the work’s one apocalyptic scene breaks out, a Vivace in C minor, the dead raised and the chorus singing scripture’s challenge: “Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?”
“Death, where is your sting? Hell, where is your victory?”
The answer is the third of the contrapuntal closes, a fugue in C major on a verse of Revelation: the Lord is worthy to receive glory and honour and power, for he created all things. It carries the most weight of the three, and it is the work’s most academic page. Then the last movement returns to F major and to the first word: “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn sterben, von nun an”
“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, from now on.” They rest from their labours, “denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach”
“for their works follow after them.” At its close the music that closed the first movement returns. The blessing on those who mourn and the blessing on the dead are made one sound.
Karl Reinthaler, the organist of Bremen Cathedral, objected that the text lacked the redeeming death of Christ. Brahms answered that he would gladly leave out “German” from the title and put “human”, and that he had chosen his texts knowingly. The objection was fair, and the answer did not deny it. The work names no saviour and prays for no one. It blesses the mourner and blesses the dead, and between them it sets the grass, the rain, the harvest, a held note, a mother and a city still to come. Choirs across the world have sung it ever since, a requiem for those who are left.
Act III · The Twelve
The order is required by the argument: the living mourn, all flesh withers, one man asks to know his end, the dwelling is longed for, the mourner is consoled, death is overcome, the dead are blessed. Cut the seventh movement and the blessing on those who mourn has no answer; the recall of the first movement’s close makes the bond audible. Length is not charged. The subtractive test still finds give. The work stood in six movements at Bremen in 1868 and was heard as whole, and the fifth completes the arch but was chosen, not compelled. The march of the second returns at length, and three movements end on the same turn.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it is made by selection: the requiem belongs to the living. The Latin Mass prays for the souls of the dead; this work opens on the mourner, “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen”
“Blessed are they who bear sorrow”, and names grief as a condition that can be borne. The next verse makes it a sowing, not an end. One man meets his limit, and at the close the dead are blessed, not judged or prayed for. Held down because the words are scripture’s, chosen rather than written; because the consolation is promised and never grounded; and because Reinthaler’s objection, that the redeeming death of Christ is missing, names a real evasion.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Height is reached in every movement, by different means. The first rises by restraint: no violins, the lower strings divided, the chorus quiet, the harps arriving at the close on the promise of comfort. The second is the sublime of dread, a march in triple time sung softly, then with full force and timpani, until it breaks into B flat major: “Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit”
“But the word of the Lord endures in eternity”. The third gathers to a fugue over an unmoving D; the fourth is beauty without strain; the sixth carries the last trumpet into praise. Held from the top: the register is mostly inward, and the sixth movement’s fugue can sound like a duty discharged.
Score: 9.2 / 10
The archetype is built, from fragments chosen across the whole Bible: seed, grass and harvest as the figure of death and renewal. Tears are sown and sheaves brought home; flesh is grass; the farmer waits for the early and the late rain; the pilgrim has no lasting city; the dead rest from their labours, “denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach”
“for their works follow after them”. The figure bears weight across the whole and returns at the close. What holds it at the gate is the particular, withheld by design: no one in the work has a name, and the death and resurrection at the centre of the faith are left out, so the myth is built round an empty centre.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inherited form is the requiem, the Latin Mass for the dead as Mozart, Cherubini and Berlioz had set it. The departure is plain: a vernacular text compiled by the composer from the whole Bible, Apocrypha included; no Introit, no Dies irae, no Sanctus, no prayer for the dead; the mourner as its subject; the name of Christ absent; a concert work built as an arch. The stake was real for a composer of thirty-four, and Vienna hissed. Held below the top by its roots: the Lutheran tradition had already set compiled scripture on death in German, in Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien (1636) and Bach’s cantata BWV 106. The swerve turns a tradition rather than leaving it.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Change the form and the work loses what it knows. Its claim is that the blessing on those who mourn and the blessing on the dead are one blessing, and the form makes it: the outer movements share a word, a key and, at the close, music. The house of the Lord stands at the centre of the arch. The fugue of the third movement is form as statement: the souls are in God’s hand, and a single D is held unmoving under the voices for its whole length. Held below the top because the form stood without the fifth movement at Bremen, and because the contrapuntal close comes three times.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Evidence rather than promise: a century and a half of return, still contested. The questions are real: whether the work is Christian, humanist or German; what “deutsch” in its title means, a word Brahms offered to give up; how far it grows from the rising figure of its opening, which commentators have traced through every movement, how literally being disputed. Michael Musgrave’s Cambridge handbook and Daniel Beller-McKenna’s Brahms and the German Spirit, which reads the title against the politics of 1866 to 1871, keep them open. Performance is unsettled: choir size, the organ’s weight, tempo, period instruments. Held well below the summit: the literature is smaller, and the questions, though real, are fewer.
Score: 9.0 / 10
The work reorganised what a requiem could be: a concert work of consolation on words the composer chose, addressed to the living, free of the liturgy and of dogma, carrying a composer’s largest statement without the Mass. Its reach is wide in standing and diffuse in descent; it did not redirect its field as Beethoven’s Ninth redirected the symphony. Requiems on chosen vernacular words, or without the Dies irae, followed in the next century, Delius’s, Hindemith’s on Whitman and Britten’s War Requiem among them, though their debts to this work alone are contested. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the concert requiem of chosen consolation became a form, and this work entered the repertory of choral societies everywhere.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Survival is demonstrated: more than a century and a half in the choral repertory without a lapse, recordings by every generation of conductors (Klemperer’s of the early 1960s among them), and choirs amateur and professional across the world. The surface fixed to its moment is small. The text is scripture, and the one period word is in the title: “deutsch”, which meant Luther’s language when the work was made and could be heard as a nation’s after 1871. That reading has attached to it at times, and the work has outlived it. Its standing has also moved with taste: the Wagnerians dismissed it, and it was slower to settle in France. Held a step below the top for that.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Command of the medium, bearing weight throughout: the fugue of the third movement, in several voices over a held tonic, its harmony moving against an unmoving bass; the colour of the first, where taking away the violins makes the darkness and the harps make the comfort; choral writing chorale-like and contrapuntal by turns; Luther’s German set with its stresses kept, its long prose lines phrased as music. The costs are in the score. The pedal fugue is hard to balance, as Vienna showed in 1867; the tuttis are thick; the chorus sopranos sit high and loud in the fugues of the second and sixth movements; and the sixth movement’s fugue is the most academic page.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements, the last trumpet of the sixth movement and the pastoral psalm of the fourth. One law governs them, stated in the first: every grief is answered within its own movement, and every answer is drawn from scripture’s promise, not from the music’s will. The key plan holds it, F to F, rising by a fourth, a third, a semitone, a third and a fourth, a mirror round the step from D to E flat at the centre. The outer movements share word, key and music; chorale and fugue run through all seven. The strain is in the solo writing: the baritone returns in the sixth, and the fifth, added after Bremen, breaks the symmetry of voices.
Score: 9.2 / 10
More orders than the Mass for the dead holds, and the setting integrates them: one consciousness facing its end; the community of mourners; the natural order of grass, seed, rain and harvest; labour and its rest, from the farmer’s patience to the dead whose works follow them; the family, in a mother’s comfort; wealth and its futility; the city with no lasting place; the sacred and the end of time. The figure of seed and harvest holds them; they are not listed. What holds the axis here is absence: the state, history, conflict and eros do not appear. The world of mourning is wide, but not the widest.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.3, then The Sublime, The Living Form, The Made and The Inner Law at 9.2. More than a century and a half in the choral repertory without a lapse; height reached in every movement, by restraint, by dread and by praise; a form in which a held note and a shared word and key make the work’s claim; a making that bears weight from the colour of the first bars to the pedal fugue; and one law of consolation from the pastoral psalm to the last trumpet.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 8.2: one consciousness, the mourners, nature, labour, the family, wealth, the city and the end of time are held by the figure of seed and harvest, but the state, history, conflict and eros are absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6: a myth built round a withheld centre, with no one in it named, and a reach that is wide in standing but did not redirect its field.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.7 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.2, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 9.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Imperishable at 9.3, The Unconcealment at 8.8 and The Swerve at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.6 clear it by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.6, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.2. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone.
Basis · the score of Ein deutsches Requiem, nach Worten der heiligen Schrift, Op. 45, as completed for its first complete performance at Leipzig in 1869, and its performance tradition, read from knowledge under the desk’s convention for concert music; no score, edition, text or recording was in hand, and the running time is a range across the recorded tradition, not a measurement. The seven movements, music and Brahms’s selection of the text together, are scored as one work. The fifth movement, added by Brahms before the first complete performance, is part of the work; the six-movement form heard at Bremen in 1868 is used only as evidence, the music by other composers sung there belongs to that performance, and Brahms’s own version with piano accompaniment is not scored. The words are part of the work and are read in Luther’s German as Brahms set it. What the verses say is scripture’s and is weighed as inheritance; their selection and order are credited to the work. The German is quoted only where the words are sure, and sparingly; every English gloss is the desk’s own, plain and literal, and none is taken from a published translation. Figures that could not be verified, among them the dates of composition and publication, the origin of the march, verse numbers in the Psalms and Sirach, movement headings, the length of the pedal fugue and the detail of the orchestra, are not given. The sound of the work as heard is beyond this reading and is neither credited nor charged.