Column: From Heavenly Harmony
The Fleeing of Sorrow
by Ken Myers
In January of 1865, in Hamburg, Christiane Brahms suffered a stroke. Her youngest son, Fritz, immediately sent off a telegram to his brother, then living and working in Vienna, urging him to return home. Shortly before Johannes Brahms got to his mother's bedside, she died. Deeply stricken, the 32-year-old Brahms was suddenly faced with the tasks of arranging for her funeral and assuring that other family members were cared for.
He eventually returned to Vienna and his musical life, but at this time, Brahms's reputation as a significant composer had not yet been confirmed. His ambitious and demanding D-minor Piano Concerto, premiered in 1859, had received a less than enthusiastic (sometimes downright hostile) response from the public and the critics. In 1853, Robert Schumann—an influential music critic as well as a composer and conductor—had enthusiastically championed the young Brahms, publicly proclaiming him a musical genius "destined to give ideal expression to the times." But Schumann's suicide attempt in February 1854, his tormented mental deterioration, and his subsequent death (in July 1856) had acquainted his young protégé with grief. Now his mother's death delivered Johannes Brahms another blow.
Shortly after Schumann tried to end his life, Brahms began work on a funeral march, intended to be a slow movement in a symphony he never completed. With his mother now gone, he seemed to take solace in -composition, and within months, he had developed two movements of what became his German Requiem. One of these—the second and longest movement in the final work—was based on that funeral march, now set for orchestra and chorus. The words that Brahms used—in this section and throughout the (non-liturgical) work—were not from the traditional form of the Requiem Mass, but were his own compilation from the Lutheran Bible. It is an insightful selection, intended more to convey comfort and consolation to the living than to commend, honor, and bless the dead.
From Mournful Dirge to Triumphant Proclamation
In the second movement, "For all flesh is as grass," Brahms employed verses from 1 Peter and James, and a text from the prophet Isaiah. The movement begins as a solemn dirge, the voices (initially in stark octaves) singing a simple melody reminiscent of the dark Dies Irae: "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereof falleth away." An ominous tympani beat accentuates the sense of inescapable mortality.
This dark mood is dispelled after about four minutes, when the orchestra modulates to a brighter, major key, and the choir sings, with a triple-meter freshness: "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and has long patience for it, until he receive the morning and evening rain." This section is punctuated by flute and harp, evoking the refreshment of those promised rains. Grass may wither and flowers fade, but the life given by the Lord is more certain. Love is stronger than death.
An abbreviated form of the opening "all flesh is grass" section is then repeated, followed by a very short transitional section, which proclaims, with the help of brass in full fanfare mode, "But the word of the Lord endureth for ever." This constancy is the foundation for the triumphant proclamation in the final section of the movement: "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." This magnificent conclusion to the movement is one of the places where Brahms's understanding of the rhetorical power of seventeenth and eighteenth-century polyphony (especially Schütz, Buxtehude, and Bach) is made evident.
Comfort & Promise
This second movement and the more familiar fourth movement ("How lovely are thy dwellings, O Lord of Hosts") seem to have been the first sections of the German Requiem that Brahms completed. The work was eventually to form an arch-like structure of seven movements. The first movement, "Blessed are they that mourn," is the darkest and most somber (the string section here has no violins), yet it establishes the focal concern of the whole work: comfort and consolation for the living. The seventh and final movement, "Blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord," begins with the same words as the first, but here the blessedness in view is identified not with the mourners, but with those who may now "rest from their labors."
Just as movements 1 and 7 stand in parallel, both textually and musically, so sections 2 and 6 display a similar symmetry. Both exude a joyful confidence in the final resurrection. The text for movement 6 (from Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, and Revelation) begins with a recognition that "here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come," affirms that "the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed," and concludes with a rousing fugue on the words "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has observed that, while Brahms was criticized for never mentioning Jesus Christ by name in this large work, in this section, the Lord referenced "is unequivocally the Messiah of the New Testament, and Brahms's music evokes an awesome vision of Christ in majesty."
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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