Brahms’s Requiem

The oboe: underdog or superstar? Based on the available evidence, the correct answer might be “both.” The voice of this slender double-reed woodwind instrument, plaintive and penetrating, is usually the first sound you’ll hear at any orchestral concert, the source of the clear concert “A” to which the entire ensemble tunes. In a 1695 treatise titled The Sprightly Companion, the English music publisher and bookseller Henry Playford wrote of the oboe: “For besides its Inimitable charming Sweetness of Sound (when well play’d upon) it is also Majestical and Stately ... the greatest Heros of the Age ... are infinitely pleased with This for its brave and sprightly Tone.”

Enormously prominent during the Baroque period, when influential composers like Vivaldi, Marcello, Handel, and J.S. Bach wrote concerti for the instrument, the oboe seemed to dip in popularity as a featured solo instrument after Mozart’s great Oboe Concerto of 1777. Nostalgia for times past might account for its 20th century resurgence in works for oboe and orchestra by Vaughan Williams (1943–44) and Richard Strauss (1945). Decades later, John Corigliano unleashed wilder possibilities in his fantastical Oboe Concerto of 1975.

But even when it isn’t the headline attraction, the oboe seldom strays far from the spotlight, portraying diverse characters from Handel’s regal Queen of Sheba (in Solomon) to a panoply of birds: the modest quail of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, the titular fowl of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the whimsical duck in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Descended from such rustic horns as the Greek aulos, the Eurasian and Middle Eastern surnāy, and the Indian nāgasvaram, the modern oboe has also proved ideally suited to conjuring visions of faraway lands: recall the serpentine coils of the famous Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns’s opera Samson and Delilah, or the seductive storyteller of “The Story of the Kalender Prince” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral spectacular Scheherazade.

The oboe’s capacities for evocative fantasy and tone painting were precisely what the distinguished American composer Adolphus Hailstork had in mind when he composed Distant Lands, commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra for Principal Oboe Frank Rosenwein. Like Marcello and Vaughan Williams before him, Hailstork eschews the full orchestra, designating his more intimate composition a “Triptych for Oboe and Strings.” In a note included in the published score, he writes:

For me, the oboe is an exquisite lyrical instrument with a tone that evokes a sense of some-time and some-where far away. These three pieces are written to bring to mind exotic excursions to lands seldom or even never visited by Westerners — the Middle East mainly. The first movement has a touch of humor and whimsy typical of the comic use of the oboe. The second evokes a cradle song which may call to mind a lullaby possibly sung by a new mother in a nomadic tribe. Finally, the full exoticism of the oboe sings forth like a ceremonial dance in a foreign land reaching back, perhaps, to times of the early Ottomans.

Notions of stories and travels evoked in sound come naturally to Hailstork, a versatile, prolific composer who studied with some of the 20th century’s most distinguished musical pedagogues, including Vittorio Giannini, David Diamond, H. Owen Reed, and Nadia Boulanger. Of African American, Native American, and European ancestry, Hailstork has developed a highly personal style that incorporates elements of jazz, the blues, gospel music, and spirituals. That those modes of music are rooted in song is not incidental; in a 2022 BBC interview, he ascribed his affinity for writing choral works to having sung in an Episcopal cathedral in his youth.

A fundamentally lyrical composer, Hailstork asserted in the same interview, “A succession of sounds is not the same as a progression of music.” That predilection was evident in his potent First Piano Concerto, commissioned in 1992 by a consortium of five orchestras, and his buoyant Saxophone Concerto, composed in 2024 for soloist Timothy McAllister — and it pertains as well to this newest instrumental adventure.

— Steve Smith

Steve Smith is a writer and editor based in New York City. He has written about music for The New York Times and The New Yorker, and served as an editor for the Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and NPR.

Johannes Brahms was brought up in the north German Lutheran tradition with a solid knowledge of the Bible, which remained with him all his life. Faith, however, was more elusive. Like Beethoven, he came to devise his own personal view of ethics and spirituality, which in his case tended towards an ever-deepening pessimism and a focus on the mystery of death. “Such a great man!” exclaimed Dvořák, “Such a great soul! And he believes in nothing.”

But Brahms was not quite a nihilist. He armed himself with a stoicism that protected him from the worst vicissitudes of life but did not prevent him from dwelling on death as the end of all things.

Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) belongs to a period in Brahms’s life when his fame as a composer was already widespread and would soon be enhanced by the acclaim that greeted this work. The death of his mother in 1865 seems to have prompted him to think deeply about a composition that had probably been lurking in the back of his mind for 10 years — at least since the death of Robert Schumann, who played an important role in Brahms’s early steps as a composer.

At the time of Schumann’s death, Brahms had sketched a “funeral march” in 3/4 time, which seems to have been planned as part of a symphony in D minor, the first movement of which eventually took shape as the first movement of the First Piano Concerto. It is widely assumed that the sketched march is the origin of the second movement of the Requiem, “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is like grass), with its solemn, striding 3/4 pulse.

The rest of the Requiem took shape in 1866 and 1867 and was publicly performed bit by bit. Although the fifth movement was still not composed, the performance in Bremen Cathedral on Good Friday 1868 was treated as the first full performance, and it was attended by all of Brahms’s keenest supporters and friends — Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, Albert Dietrich, and Brahms’s father. Clara wrote soon afterwards: “The Requiem has taken hold of me as no sacred music ever did before. As I saw Johannes standing there, baton in hand, I could not help thinking of my dear Robert’s prophecy — ‘let him grasp the magic wand and write a work with orchestra and chorus’ — which is fulfilled today.”

In memory of his mother, Brahms then composed the fifth movement, “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” (So you have pain now) to round out the seven-movement plan. The complete work was premiered in 1869 and quickly spread all over Germany, in the Catholic south as well as in the Protestant north.

Requiems usually use prescribed Latin texts, designed for use in formal worship services. But Brahms appropriated the title “Requiem” for a choral work that meditated on comforting the living in the face of an all-consuming death.

Like Handel when composing Messiah, Brahms chose the texts with care, sometimes combining verses from different books of the Bible to form a single movement. Only the fourth and final movements treat a single biblical text. Isaiah, the Psalms, various New Testament scriptures, and the Apocrypha are all drawn upon. There is no reference to vengeance or Christ’s sacrifice in Brahms’s texts. The emotional theme is more focused on the transience of life, the need for comfort, the reward for effort, and the hope of a happy resolution.

For a composer who had written little for chorus before this time, the Requiem is astonishingly assured and rewarding, as choral singers will attest. The orchestration is equally assured. Leaving the violins quiet in the first movement allows the divided violas and cellos to glow and at the same time announces the seriousness of Brahms’s enterprise. (This rich sound comes back in support of the baritone solo in the third movement.)

Unusual for Brahms is the inclusion of harp, which adds color at the beginning and the end of the work and is part of the distinctive sonority of the second movement. Here the timpani emphasize the march while the melody is outlined by high strings blending with high woodwinds. The entry of the chorus completes this complex picture, whose most memorable moment is the colossal crescendo that prepares the return of the combined march and chorale. The music eventually abandons triple meter and strides forward with the positive statement from the basses “Die Erlöseten des Herrn werden wiederkommen” (And the ransomed of the Lord). This is soon followed by the unmistakably happy tone of “Freude und Wonne” (Joy and gladness) from the sopranos, so that the movement concludes in high — but calm — spirits.

The third movement similarly consists of multiple sections, as Brahms shifts characters and performing forces according to the meaning of the text. When the baritone soloist and chorus have finished conversing, the movement ends with an instrumental fugue. The fourth movement, for chorus, adopts the waltz rhythm of which Brahms was always fond, and it is no accident that the woodwinds’ first phrase is answered by the chorus as an exact inversion of the melody, nor that the most prominent word in the German text is “lieblich” (lovely), precisely describing the music itself. This movement beautifully illustrates the tender side of Brahms’s genius.

The fifth movement features the soprano soloist for the first and only time in the work. It is designed like one of J.S. Bach’s arias, where the chorus intones a chorale between the soloist’s phrases. By the end of the movement, the chorus has moved into full support of the soprano and they conclude together in a quiet mood of consolation.

The sixth movement is more dramatic, for the rather solemn phrases from the chorus give little warning of what is to come. The words do indeed threaten “Wir werden verwandelt werden” (We will all be changed) but not until the sound of “der letzten Posaune” (the last trumpet) does the music bring in the clamorous victory of death, crowned with a long elaborate fugue on the phrase “Herr, Du bist würdig” (You are worthy, our Lord and God).

After the extraordinary climax of the preceding music, the seventh movement resumes a more solemn spirit, returning gradually to the mood and the key of the opening movement, and ending with the same quiet cadence.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.

Sung Texts

Text adapted by Brahms from Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible
English translation from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition

I. Chorus
(Matthew 5:4; Psalm 126: 5–6)

Selig sind, die da Leid tragen,
denn sie sollen getröstet werden. 

Die mit Tränen säen,
werden mit Freuden ernten.
Sie gehen hin und weinen
und tragen edlen Samen,
und kommen mit Freuden
und bringen ihre Garben.

Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted. 

May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.

II. Chorus
(1 Peter 1:24; James 5:7–8; 1 Peter 1:24–25; Isaiah 35:10)

Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras,
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret
und die Blume abgefallen. 

So seid nun geduldig,
lieben Brüder,
bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn.
Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet
auf die köstliche Frucht der Erde
und ist geduldig darüber,
bis er empfahe den Morgenregen
und Abendregen.*
So seid geduldig. 

Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras ...

Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet
in Ewigkeit. 

Die Erlöseten des Herrn
werden wiederkommen,
und gen Zion kommen mit Jauchzen;
Freude, ewig Freude,
wird über ihrem Haupte sein;
Freude und Wonne
werden sie ergreifen,
und Schmerz und Seufzen
wird weg müssen.

For all flesh is like grass
and all its glory
like the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls. 

Be patient, therefore,
brothers and sisters,
until the coming of the Lord.
The farmer waits
for the precious crop from the earth,
being patient with it
until it receives the early
and the late rains.
You also must be patient. 

For all flesh is like grass ... 

But the word of the Lord
endures forever.

And the ransomed of the Lord
shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy
shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain
joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing
shall flee away.

*Luther’s original translation reads “bis er empfange den Frühregen und den Spätregen.” Brahms tweaked this line to “bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und Abendregen” to more specifically evoke the “morning rain” and “evening rain.”

III. Baritone and Chorus
(Psalm 39:4–7; Wisdom of Solomon 3:1)

Herr, lehre doch mich,
daß ein Ende mit mir haben muß,
und mein Leben ein Ziel hat
und ich davon muß.
Siehe, meine Tage sind
einer Hand breit vor dir,
und mein Leben ist wie nichts vor dir.

Ach, wie gar nichts sind alle Menschen,
die doch so sicher leben.
Sie gehen daher wie ein Schemen,
und machen ihnen
viel vergebliche Unruhe;
sie sammeln und wissen nicht,
wer es kriegen wird.
Nun, Herr, wes soll ich mich trösten?
Ich hoffe auf dich. 

Der Gerechten Seelen
sind in Gottes Hand
und keine Qual rühret sie an.

Lord, let me know
my end,
and what is the measure of my days;
Let me know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my days
a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is nothing in your sight. 

Surely everyone
stands as a mere breath.
Surely everyone goes out like a shadow.
Surely for nothing
they are in turmoil;
they heap up and do not know
who will gather.
And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in you. 

But the souls of the righteous
are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.

IV. Chorus
(Psalm 84:1–2, 4)

Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,
Herr Zebaoth!
Meine Seele verlanget und sehnet sich
nach den Vorhäfen des Herrn;
mein Leib und Seele freuen sich
in dem lebendigen Gott.
Wohl denen,
die in deinem Hause wohnen,
die loben dich immerdar.

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Happy are those
who live in your house,
ever singing your praise.

V. Soprano and Chorus
(John 16:22; Isaiah 66:12–13; Ecclesiasticus 51:27)

Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit;
aber ich will euch wiedersehen,
und euer Herz soll sich freuen,
und eure Freude soll niemand
von euch nehmen.

Ich will euch trösten,
wie einen seine Mutter tröstet.

Sehet mich an:
Ich habe eine kleine Zeit
Mühe und Arbeit gehabt
und habe großen Trost funden.

So you have pain now,
but I will see you again,
and your heart will rejoice,
and no one will take
your joy from you.

As a mother comforts her child,
so I will comfort you.

See with your own eyes
that I have labored
but little
and found for myself much serenity.

VI. Baritone and Chorus
(Hebrews 13:14; 1 Corinthians 15:51–52, 54–55; Revelation 4:11)

Denn wir haben hier
keine bleibende Statt,
sondern die zukünftige suchen wir. 

Siehe, ich sage euch ein Geheimnis:
Wir werden nicht alle entschlafen,
wir werden aber alle
verwandelt werden;
und dasselbige plötzlich,
in einem Augenblick,
zu der Zeit der letzten Posaune.
Denn es wird die Posaune schallen
und die Toten
werden auferstehen unverweslich;
und wir werden verwandelt werden. 

Dann wird erfüllet werden das Wort,
das geschrieben steht:
Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg.
Tod, wo ist dein Stachel?
Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg? 

Herr, du bist würdig,
zu nehmen Preis und Ehre und Kraft,
denn du hast alle Dinge geschaffen,
und durch deinen Willen
haben sie das Wesen
und sind geschaffen.

For here we have
no lasting city, but we are looking
for the city that is to come. 

Look, I will tell you a mystery!
We will not all die,
but we will all
be changed,
in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound,
and the dead
will be raised imperishable,
and we will be changed. 

Then the saying that is written
will be fulfilled:
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will
they existed
and were created.

VII. Chorus
(Revelation 14:13)

Selig sind die Toten,
die in dem Herren sterben, von nun an.
Ja, der Geist spricht,
daß sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit,
denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach.

Blessed are the dead
who from now on die in the Lord.
Yes, says the Spirit,
they will rest from their labors,
for their deeds follow them.