JM 2002 19 4 616

Brahms's Opus 45 and German Protestant Funeral Music
Author(s): Robin A. Leaver

Source: The Journal of Musicology , Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 2002), pp. 616-640
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2002.19.4.616
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Brahms’s Opus 45
and German Protestant
Funeral Music
R O B I N A . L E AV E R
M uch has been written about Brahms’s Ein

deutsches Requiem (op. 45) from all kinds of perspectives. A persistent fea-
ture of much of this writing is the dif culty in coming to terms with the
title: “A German Requiem.” Many writers have thus commented on
Brahms’s work from the point of view of the Catholic tradition of musi-
cal settings of the Latin Requiem Mass, noting that it has virtually noth-
616 ing in common with that tradition. Others, recognizing the different na-
ture of this work, have sought to explain it in terms of the nationalism
that preceded the Franco-German war of 1870–71, the pessimistic phi-
losophy of Schopenhauer, or the context of mid 19th-century German
memorial oratorios that similarly employed Biblical librettos.1 But per-
haps too much has been made of the term “Requiem” and insuf cient
attention given to the North German Protestant tradition of funerary
music. This paper attempts to explore the main lines of this tradition in
relation to Brahms’s op. 45.2
An earlier form of this essay was given as the second Annual

Blackard Lecture at Brevard College, North Carolina,
5 February 2000.
1
See for example the contributions of Jürgen Heidrich, Hanns Christian Stekel,
Daniel Beller-McKenna, among others, cited in the notes below.
2
For a different approach to the same theme, see Daniel Beller-McKenna, “How
deutsch a Requiem? Absolute Music, Universality, and the Reception of Brahms’s Ein
deutsches Requiem,” 19th Century Music 22 ( 1998): 3–19. For other interpretations of Ein
deutsches Requiem, see Friedhelm Krummacher, “Symphonie und Motette: Überlegungen
zum Deutschen Requiem,” Brahms-Analysen, ed. Friedhelm Krummacher and Wolfrum
Steinbeck (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), 183–200; and Adolf Nowak, “ ‘Ein deutsches Re-
quiem’ im Traditionszummenhang,” op. cit., 201.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. XIX, Issue 4, Fall 2002, pp. 616–640, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN
1533-8347 © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send requests for
permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000
Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

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leaver
Martin Luther
The tradition begins with Martin Luther who, as part of the Refor-
mation of the early 16th century, rejected Catholic theology and prac-
tice with regard to the departed. For him the Catholic theology of death
in his day was unbiblical, with a diminished understanding of resurrec-
tion. Requiem Masses were unacceptable, because of their morbid pre-
occupation with the horrors of death and its consequences. Luther
therefore proposed that funerals should have an extensive Biblical con-
tent, declare the hope of resurrection, and be expressed in musical
form. In 1542 Luther published a small collection of funeral music:
Christliche Geseng Lateinisch vnd Deudsch zum Begrebnis (Latin and German
Christian Songs for Burials; Wittemberg: Klug, 1542). Luther supplied
a preface in which he expounded the differences between the old
Requiem Mass and the new evangelical funeral rite. It begins:
St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians [1 Thess. 4: 13–18] not to sorrow

over the dead as others who have no hope, but to comfort each other
with God’s Word [i.e., Scripture] as having a certain hope of life and of
the resurrection of the dead. . . . We Christians . . . should by faith train
and accustom ourselves to despise death and to regard it as a deep, 617
strong and sweet sleep. . . .
Accordingly we have removed from our churches and completely
abolished the popish abominations, such as vigils, masses for the dead
. . . and all other hocus-pocus on behalf of the dead . . . Nor do we sing
dirges or doleful songs over our dead and at the grave, but comforting
hymns of the forgiveness of sins, of rest, sleep, life, and the resurrec-
tion of departed Christians so that our faith may be strengthened and
the people moved to true devotion.3
Toward the end of the preface, Luther moves on to speak about epitaphs
and inscriptions on grave markers, which in his view should be Biblical
verses or simple rhymed versions of Scripture. As examples he gives in
full 22 verses taken variously from Genesis to 1 Thessalonians and
arranged in Biblical order.4 In drawing together a topically arranged list
of suitable Scripture verses, Luther established a methodology that was
followed by later Lutheran authors in their devotional books, especially
those that were themselves ars moriendi manuals, or those that included
such sections within their contents (see the examples given below).
3
Luther’s Works: American Edition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehman (St. Louis
and Philadelphia: Concordia and Fortress, 1955– ; hereafter cited as LW), 53: 325–26;
Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. J. F. K. Knaake, et al. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883– ;
hereafter cited as WA), 35: 478–79.
4
LW 53: 328–30; WA 35: 480–81. Luther also includes four examples of suitable
passages put into simple rhymes; LW 53: 330–31; WA 35: 482–83.

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t h e j o u r n a l o f m u s ic o lo g y
The Latin and German hymns follow the preface. They comprise
one strophic Latin hymn, six German hymns, and what appear to be
seven Latin responsoria.5 Of the German hymns, ve were by Luther, ei-
ther originals or reworkings of earlier material, and the sixth, Nun laßt
uns den Leib begraben (Now we lay the body in the grave), was a Czech
hymn translated into German by Michael Weisse ( rst published in the
German Bohemian Brethren hymnal of 1531), which Luther revised
and supplied with a nal stanza for the collection of burial hymns of
1542.6 It is in this form that the hymn became extremely popular in
later Lutheranism. It effectively became the funeral hymn, since many
church orders of the regional Protestant churches in Germany included
it within their burial rites; indeed, it has been referred to as “the classic
burial hymn of Lutheran Christianity.”7
Luther’s method in his Latin responsoria of 1542 was to retain the
older chant melodies but replace their texts with verses from Scripture.
He also retained the traditional responsory structure of a respond and a
verse, and so juxtaposed different Scripture verses in these new forms:
Respond Verse
618 I Job 19: 25 Psalm 146: 1–2
II Isaiah 57: 1–2 Psalm 17: 15
III Matthew 9: 23–24 Mark 6: 41–42
IV 1 Corinthian 15: 51–52 1 Corinthian 15: 54
V 1 Corinthian 15: 41–44 1 Corinthian 15: 45
VI 1 Thessalonians 4: 13 1 Thessalonians 4: 14
VII 1 Thessalonians 4: 14 1 Corinthian 15: 228
The ABA responsory form meant that the respond (or part of the re-
spond) was repeated after the verse, thus corresponding to the general
antiphonal chant tradition in which the antiphon—in this case the
respond—is sung at the beginning, before the verse, and again at the
end. If more than one of Luther’s responsories was sung on a particular
5
See Robin A. Leaver, “Sequences and Responsories: Continuity of Forms in Luther’s
Liturgical Provisions,” in Change and Continuity in Medieval and Early Modern Worship, ed.
Karin Maag and John Witvliet (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Univ. Press, forthcoming).
6
Markus Jenny, ed., Luthers geistliche Lieder und Kirchengesänge: Vollständige Neuedition,
Archiv zu Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers, 4 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1985), 309–
10.
7
“Das klassische Begräbnislied der evangelischen Christenheit,” in Handbuch zum
Evangelischen Kirchengesangbuch, ed. Christhard Mahrenholz, Oskar Söhngen, and Otto
Schlißke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1953–1990), 3/1: 561.
8
See Markus Jenny, “Sieben biblische Begräbnisgesänge: Ein unerkanntes und
unediertes Werk Martin Luthers,” in Lutheriana: Zum 500. Geburtstag Martin Luthers von der
Mitarbeitern der Weimarer Ausgabe, ed. Gerhard Hammer and Karl-Heinz zur Mühlen, Archiv
zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers: Texte und Untersuchungen, 5
(Cologne: Böhlau, 1984), 455–74.

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leaver
occasion, the result was a sequence of different verses of Scripture

which focus on hope and resurrection. With his Christliche Geseng . . .
zum Begrebnis of 1542, Luther thus established the Lutheran funerary
tradition in which devotional writings on death and dying included ta-
pestries of appropriate Biblical verses, the tradition that also included
musical settings similarly based on a variety of Scriptural sources.
Heinrich Schütz
In the generations that followed Luther, composers wrote many set-
tings of Scripture texts suitable for funerary use.9 For example, Hein-
rich Schütz composed a number of such pieces, some of them on the
same texts that Brahms would use more than 200 years later: The
Psalmen Davids (1619) included Wie lieblich sind die Wohnungen (Psalm
84; SWV 29) and Die mit Thränen säen (Psalm 126: 5; SWV 42); and in
the Geistliche Chormusik (1648) is found another setting of Die mit Thrä-
nen säen (Psalm 126: 5; SWV 378), together with Selig sind die Toten (Rev-
elation 14: 3; SWV 391), and Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt ( Job 19: 25).
Although such pieces were usually based on singular texts, in practice
more than one motet or concerted piece was sung at a funeral or memo- 619
rial service, therefore collectively presenting a sequence of Biblical
verses.
In his Musikalische Exequien (SWV 279–281), composed for the fu-
neral of Duke Heinrich Posthumous Reuß that took place in Gera in
early 1636 (and partially published in Dresden by Wolf Seyffert later the
same year), Schütz used a variety of Scriptural texts. In preparation for
his death, the Duke chose these Biblical passages, arranged them in their
particular sequence, directed that they should adorn the sides and lid of
his cof n (indicating which one was to be the subject of the funeral ser-
mon), and speci ed that Schütz should compose suitable funeral music
using the same texts.10 In making such detailed plans for his own fu-
neral, the Duke was consciously pursuing a Lutheran ars moriendi.11 It
9
See Norbert Bolín, “Sterben ist mein Gewinn”: Ein Beitrag zur evangelischen Funeralkom-
position der deutschen Sepulkralkutur des Barock 1550–1750 (Kassel: Arbeitsgemeinschaft
Friedhof und Denkmal, 1989); Gerhard Kappner, “Lateinsiche Totenmesse und deutsche
Begräbnismusik,” Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 27 (1983): 118–34.
10
See Werner Breig, “Heinrich Schütz’ Musikalische Exequien: Überlegungen zur
Werkgeschichte und zur textlich-musikalischen Konzeption,” Schütz-Jahrbuch 11 (1989):
53–68; Sabine Henze-Döring, “Schütz’ Musikalische Exequien: Die kompositorische Disposi-
tion der Sarginschriften und ihr liturgischer Kontext,” Schütz-Jahrbuch 16 (1994): 39–48.
11
The practice of making such detailed preparations for one’s death and the ensu-
ing funeral arrangements was apparently quite common; see Gregory Johnstone, “The
Musical Box: Cof ns as Locus for Performance and Composition in Early Modern Ger-
many,” read at the Ninth Biennial Baroque Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 12–16
July 2000, in Irish Musicological Studies 9, in press.

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seems likely that he was inspired by a speci c handbook, Martin

Moller’s Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem, rst published in Görlitz in
1593 and reissued numerous times in various places throughout the
17th century.12 Its subtitle is Heilsame und sehr nützliche Betrachtung / wie
ein mensch christlich leben / vnd seliglich sterben sol (Wholesome and Very
Useful Meditation on How One Should Live Christianly and Die Bless-
edly). The eighth chapter is devoted to an anthology of more than 60
Biblical texts, similar to those given by Luther in his burial hymns of
1542.1 3 This is hardly surprising, since in the preface to that work
Luther effectively gave a mandate for the compilation of such collec-
tions of texts: “Some ne examples of these we have printed in this
booklet and we, or whoever is more gifted than we, will select more of
them in the future.”14 Most of the texts that the Duke had put on his
cof n could be found in this chapter of Moller’s book.
The Musikalische Exequien comprises three movements. Schütz makes
it clear that his rst movement (SWV 279) is analogous to the Kyrie and
Gloria of a Lutheran Missa, and he indicates that it can be used as a sub-
stitute for the Kyrie and Gloria on the feast of the Puri cation or the
16th Sunday after Trinity,15 when the respective liturgical gospels for
620 those days focus on the end of life. This underscores that Schütz is
standing squarely in the Lutheran tradition of funerary settings and that
his libretto is primarily of Biblical texts. The rst is a complex concerted
movement with a libretto made up of an interweaving of 13 Biblical
texts, set in the sequence they appear on the Duke’s cof n, together
with stanzas of nine different chorales. But the opening Biblical text of
the movement, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb . . .” ( Job 1: 21)
was not inscribed on the Duke’s cof n, though it does appear in
Moller’s collection of texts.16
The second movement of the Musikalische Exequien (SWV 280) con-
trasts with the rst in that it is a double-chorus antiphonal motet on the
same words on which the funeral sermon was preached immediately be-
fore it was sung (Psalm 73: 25–26),17 and the third movement is an-
12 See Renate Steiger, “ ‘Der gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand’: Der Sarg des
Heinrich Posthumus Reuß als Zeugnis lutherischer ars moriendi,” Diesseits- und Jen-
seitsvorstellungen im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Ingeborg Stein (Bad Köstritz: Heinrich-Schütz-
Haus, 1996), 189–246.
13 See Steiger, “Der Sarg des Heinrich Posthumus Reuß,” 209–12, which reproduces
in facsimile pp. 189–203 of the edition published by Stern (Lüneburg 1630), comprising
chap. 8 of the book.
14
LW 53: 327; WA 35: 479.
15 See Schütz Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, 4: 7; George J. Buelow, “A Schütz Reader:
Documents, on Performance Practice,” American Choral Review 27/4 (October, 1985): 21.
16 Steiger, “Der Sarg des Heinrich Posthumus Reuß,” 211, which reproduces Moller,
Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem (Lüneburg: Stern, 1630), 199.

17 Schütz later made similar arrangements for his own funeral. He commissioned
the Dresden court preacher, Martin Geier, to preach the funeral sermon on Psalm 119: 54

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leaver
other concerted setting of the prose Nunc dimittis from Luke 2 (SWV
281)18 that also incorporates Selig sind die Toten (Blessed are the dead
that die in the Lord; Revelation 14: 3), another text not inscribed on
the Duke’s cof n but found in Moller’s treasury of Biblical texts.19
The three movements of the Musikalische Exequien form a simple
symmetry, the two outer movements being adventurous concerted set-
tings which contrast with the more formal double-chorus motet that
forms the central movement.
Johann Sebastian Bach

One of the earliest cantatas that Bach composed is Gottes Zeit ist die
allerbeste Zeit (God’s time is the best time), titled Actus tragicus (BWV
106), to which most scholars assign a date sometime around 1707,
when the composer was organist of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen. It
is clearly a funerary cantata, though the identity of the person who was
thus memorialized is unknown. In common with later 17th-century
cantatas, the libretto is essentially a sequence of Biblical texts. In Bach’s
libretto these were extracted from a devotional prayer book drawn up
by the theologian Johannes Olearius, entitled Christliche Bet-Schule 621
(Christian School of Prayer) (Leipzig: Frommann, 1668), speci cally
from the section headed “Täglich Seuffzer und Gebet üm ein seliges
Ende” (Daily Devotion and Prayer for a Blessed End): Acts 17: 28, Psalm
90: 12, Isaiah 38: 1, Ecclesiasticus 14: 17, [Philippians 1: 23—omitted in
BWV 106], Revelation 22: 20, Psalm 31: 5, and Luke 23: 43. Bach also
utilized two chorales not alluded to in the Olearius prayer book: the
chorale melody Ich hab mein Sach Gott heimgestellt (heard instrumentally
without its associated text) and the rst stanza of Luther’s paraphrase
of the Nunc dimittis, Mit Fried und Freud ich far dahin, a hymn that Luther
directed should be sung at funerals.
In this cantata Bach, like Schütz before him in the Musikalische Exe-
quien, makes use of a sequence of Biblical texts that has links with a
speci c devotional book and at the same time makes different use of
Lutheran chorales. Although different in musical style and instrumenta-
tion, the works of both composers clearly stand in the Lutheran tradi-
tion of funerary music.
and his former pupil Christoph Bernhard to compose a motet on the same text “in the
style of Palestrinian counterpoint”; see Robin. A. Leaver, Music in the Service of the Church:
The Funeral Sermon for Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) (St. Louis: Concordia, 1984), 10–11.
18
Hence the appropriateness of the Musikalische Exequien for the feast of the Puri -
cation, since the Gospel of the day, from Luke 2, included the Song of Simeon.
19
Steiger, “Der Sarg des Heinrich Posthumus Reuß,” 212 (= Moller, Manuale de
praeparatione ad mortem, 202).

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Johannes Brahms
Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms belongs similarly to the
German Lutheran tradition of funerary music. Brahms certainly knew
the works of both Schütz and Bach, since he was a subscriber to the col-
lected editions of both composers. However, neither the Musikalische Ex-
equien of Schütz nor the Actus tragicus of Bach was published in the com-
posers’ respective collected works until after Brahms had completed his
opus 45. But Bach’s Cantata 106 had been published by Simrock in
Bonn in 1830, and copies of Schütz’s compositions circulated among in-
terested collectors and musicians and were at that time beginning to ap-
pear in print.2 0 Thus both could have been known by Brahms at the
time he composed his work. Virginia Hancock’s observation concerning
music by Schütz on the same texts as those found in Brahms’s opus 45
is appropriate in this context: “Regardless of whether the existence of
these early Baroque settings had any in uence on Brahms’s choice of
texts for the Requiem, the long history of its composition covers the pe-
riod of his most extensive study of early music.”21 At the very least
Brahms must have been aware of the long-standing German Protestant
tradition of funerary music, since he was born and brought up in Ham-
622
burg, a city with a signi cant Protestant heritage.
Brahms kept returning to Hamburg throughout his life, and even
after he moved to Vienna in 1862, he made several unsuccessful at-
tempts to return permanently to the city. It was to Hamburg he returned
in 1865 for the last illness and funeral of his beloved mother,2 2 whose
death was memorialized especially in movement 5 of Ein deutsches Re-
quiem. Hamburg was a city never very far away from his thoughts.23
During the late 17th and 18th centuries, the Hanseatic port became
one of the leading cities of Protestant North Germany, and a succession
of notable preachers and theologians served the pulpits of the city
churches.24 Even though the Enlightenment of the later 18th century
20 See Virginia Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions and His Library of Early Music
(Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 127–28.

21 Ibid., 128.
22
See Brahms’s letter to Clara Schumann, dated 6 February 1865 in Letters of Clara
Schumann and Johannes Brahms 1853–1896, 2 vols., ed. Berthold Litzmann (New York:
Longmans, Green, 1927), 1: 179–80.
23 In a letter to Clara Schumann, dated 4 April 1864 he wrote “How glad should I
be, for instance, if I could go to Hamburg very soon and spend a few evenings in my old
room” (ibid., 1: 166). Some 25 years later he was granted the Freedom of the City of Ham-
burg; see ibid., 2: 156, 160.
24 Brahms was probably well aware of this Hamburg background. The deacon of the
Michaeliskirche, Johannes Geffcken (1803–1864), who prepared him for con rmation,
was a leading member of the Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte (Society for Hamburg
History) and author of Johann Winckler und die hamburgische Kirche in seiner Zeit (1684–
1705) (Hamburg: Nolte, 1861).

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leaver
somewhat diminished the signi cance of Lutheran orthodoxy in the

city, its Protestant heritage nevertheless continued to in uence the lives
of its inhabitants. Brahms was therefore brought up within the general
ethos of North German Protestantism, and even though in later life he
was not a believer in a regular church-going sense, he did clearly express
a personal, nondogmatic Protestant spirituality that was grounded in an
intimate and rsthand knowledge of Scripture. Throughout his life
Brahms read deeply, extensively, and continuously in Luther’s German
translation of the Bible. He even made the claim that he could always
put his hand on his Bible, even in the dark.25 Brahms was like many of
his contemporaries, post-Enlightenment Protestants who retained a Bib-
lical spirituality that was not closely circumscribed by the speci cs of
dogmatic theology. The church was there when you needed it, notably
when the baptismal rite identi ed life’s beginning and the burial rite
marked its end. These two Protestant elements, respect for Scripture
and regard for the church’s rites of passage, are intertwined in Brahms’s
Deutsches Requiem, since its text is made up entirely of Biblical passages—
all of them chosen by the composer himself—and the work as a whole
stands at the end of a long line of Protestant funerary music that has its
beginnings in the 16th century. 623
Chorale Connections in Ein deutsches Requiem

Like the two particular works of Schütz and Bach discussed above,
the words to Brahms’s op. 45 comprise a sequence of Biblical texts, and
several of the movements appear to have been based upon a speci c
chorale melody, though in Brahms’s case the use of chorales was more
disguised than in either of the works of his two predecessors.
The chorale connection with Brahms’s op. 45 comes from a single
source, the conductor Siegfried Ochs, who, many decades after the
composition of the work, recollected Brahms’s comments in connection
with a performance late in the composer’s life. In his preface to the Eu-
lenberg edition of op. 45, issued in the rst decade of the 20th century,
Ochs reported that he had suggested to the composer that there might
be an underlying theme to the work, to which Brahms had (“sarcasti-
cally”) replied: “Tja, if you cannot hear it, it does not matter much. It’s
25
Karl Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1947), 328–29. “I was baptized, learned by heart the catechism of Luther, also read the
Bible diligently” (letter to Adolf Schubring, July 1856, in Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel
[Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1902–22], 8: 188, cited Michael Musgrave, A
Brahms Reader [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2000], 290 n63). See also Daniel Beller-
McKenna, “Brahms, Schumann and the Bible,” Newsletter of the American Brahms Society 13
(1995): 1–4; and Hanns Christian Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz: Theologische Aspecte in den
wortgebundenen religiösen Kompositionen von Johannes Brahms (Frankfurt: Lang, 1997), 65–70.

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found in the rst measures [of the opening movement] and in the
second movement. It is a well-known chorale.” Ochs then quoted the
rst line of Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten, text and melody by Georg
Neumark, 1657 (see Ex. 1).26 Later, in his 1922 autobiography, un-
doubtedly referring to the same occasion, Ochs reported that Brahms
had told him
that the whole work is essentially founded on the chorale Wer nur den
lieben Gott lässt walten. Although this never comes into the foreground
of the score, nevertheless several themes of the work proceed from it.27
Some have either doubted the veracity of Ochs’ s account—because

it was recorded so long after the fact—or suggested that the conductor
identi ed the wrong chorale melody. Thus Christopher Reynolds has ar-
gued that the chorale Freu’ dich sehr, O meine Seele was Brahms’s model,28
and Tilden A. Russell has suggested that the underlying melody was
Brahms’s own.29 Others have sought to reinforce Ochs’s report concern-
ing Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten. Morten Topp, among others, has
opined that since Schumann used the opening melodic contour of the
624 chorale for the eighth song of his opus 24, Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen
(see Ex. 2), Brahms’s use of the same melody in Ein deutsches Requiem
was a way of paying homage to the memory of his deceased fellow com-
poser and friend.30 In an earlier essay Michael Musgrave examined the
26 Siegfried Ochs, “Vorwort,” Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem, Eulenberg Edition no.
969 (Leipzig: Eulenberg, [ca. 1910?]), iv. See also Michael Musgrave, Brahms: A German
Requiem (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 26–28; and Malcolm MacDonald,
Brahms (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 197–98. There were other melodies assigned to the
text Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten; see Johannes Zahn, Die Melodien der deutschen evange-
lischen Kirchenlieder (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1889–93; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms,
1968), where nos. 2777–95 represent 19 different melodies published by 1857. That Neu-
mark’s melody, cited by Ochs (Zahn no. 2778), was the primary melody associated with
the text in the mid 19th century is con rmed by Friedrich Layritz, Kern des deutschen
Kirchengesangs zum Gebrauch evangelisch-lutherischer Gemeinden und Familien (Nördlingen:
Beck, 1853–1855), which gives only the Neumark melody for the chorale. Layritz was a
leader in the movement for the restoration of chorale melodies to their pre-Enlightenment
forms.
27
Siegfried Ochs, Geschehenes, Gesehenes (Leipzig: Grethlein, 1922), 302; cited in
MacDonald, Brahms, 197.
28
Christopher Reynolds, “A Choral Symphony by Brahms?” 19th Century Music 9
(1985): 11–14; see also Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 28–29.
29
Tilden A. Russell, “Brahms and Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten: A New Contribu-
tion,” American Brahms Society Newsletter 6/2 (Autumn 1988). There is also the facetious re-
mark in a letter Brahms wrote to Adolf Schubrinwg, dated 16 February 1869: “Have you
not then discovered the political allusion in my Requiem?” Brahms then made reference
to Haydn’s Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, referring to current Austro-Prussian tensions; see
Beller-McKenna, “How deutsch a Requiem?” 6–8.
30
Morton Topp, “Motiv, Wort und die deutsch-evangelischen Kirchenlieder im
Deutschen Requiem von Johannes Brahms,” Musik og Forskning 17 (1991–1992): 7–52.

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example 1. Ochs’s comparison of the ground motive of Brahms’s rst

movement and the beginning of the chorale Wer nur den
lieben Gott läßt walten
[op. 45/1]
[Chorale]
Wer nur den lie - ben Gott (läßt walten)
example 2. Comparison of the chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt wal-
ten and the beginning of Schumann’s song Anfangs wollt’
ich fast verzagen
Neumark 1657
Wer nur den lie - ben Gott lä ßt wal - ten...

Schumann, op. 24/8, mm. 2–4 625
An - fang wollt ich fast ver - za - gen...
chorale connection at some length and, while cautiously admitting that

the question must remain open, nevertheless endorsed the opinion that
Ochs’s report should be taken seriously: “It seems highly improbable
that a man of Ochs’s reputation would have ascribed to Brahms conjec-
tural theories of his own in print. He must have been quite sure.”31 In a
more recent study Musgrave revisited the evidence and made reference
to movements of two cantatas of Bach which both make use of Wer nur
den lieben Gott lässt walten: Cantata 21 (movement 9) and Cantata 27
(movement 1), both published in 1855 in volume 5/1, edited by Wil-
helm Rust, of the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, to which Brahms subscribed.
Musgrave was particularly struck by the similarities between Bach’s set-
ting of the chorale melody in the rst movement of Cantata 27 (unusu-
ally in ) and Brahms’s second movement of Ein deutsches Requiem (also
Topp also explores at some length and detail possible connections with other chorale
melodies that might also have been employed by Brahms in opus 45 as a hidden dedica-
tion to the memory of Schumann.
31
Michael Musgrave, “Historical In uences in the Growth of Brahms’s ‘Requiem,’ ”
Music and Letters 53 (1972): 6.

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example 3. Similarities between Bach’s Cantata 27 and Brahms’s opus

45
a.
Bach, BWV 27/1, mm. 13–16
Wer weiss wie na - he mit mein En - de...
b.
Brahms, op. 45/2, mm. 22–26
Denn al - les Fleisch es ist wie Gras...
c.
Bach, BWV 27/1, mm. 13–16
626
Brahms, op. 45/2, mm. 22–25
in ), especially the con gurations of the respective orchestral accompa-

niments (see Ex. 3a–c).32
There also appears to be a compositional connection between
movement 2 of op. 45 and Bach’s Cantata 21, composed as a funeral
piece, which Brahms had conducted ve times by the end of 1858.33
The rst chorus of BWV 21 is in two parts: The second, a spirited vivace,
contrasts with the somber rst part, illustrating the bipartite form of the
text: (1) “Ich hatte viel Bekümmmernis in meinem Herzen” (I have
much trouble in my heart); (2) “aber deine Tröstungen erquicken
meine Seele” (but your words of comfort revive my soul). Bach contrives
to emphasize the contrast between the two sections by a static, chordal
setting of the pivotal word “aber” (see Ex. 4a). In the second movement
32 Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 31–33.
33
See Siegmund Helms, “Johann Brahms und Johann Sebastian Bach,” Bach-
Jahrbuch 57 (1971): 34.

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example 4. Similar pivotal points in Bach’s Cantata 21 and Brahms’s

opus 45
a. b.
Bach, BWV 21/1, m. 21 Brahms, op. 45/2, mm. 198–199
a - ber... A - ber...
of the Requiem, Brahms uses the same device in his setting of “Denn alles
Fleisch es ist wie Gras . . . Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet . . .” (All esh is as
grass . . . but the word of the Lord remains . . .) (see Ex. 4b). The simi-
larity is suf ciently striking to suggest that Brahms was consciously fol-
lowing Bach; and if so, the argument supporting Brahms’s use of the
chorale melody Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten is strengthened, because
movement 9 of Bach’s funeral cantata (BWV 21) employs this chorale.
Brahms made use of well known chorales throughout his career. Ex-
amples include Begräbnisgesang, op. 13 (1858); the motet Es ist das Heil, 627
op. 29 (by 1860); a prelude and fugue on O Traurigkeit for organ (1858–
73); two motets, Warum and O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, op. 74 (1877);
the motet Wenn wir in höchsten, op. 110 (1889); and the 11 chorale pre-
ludes for organ, op. 122 posthumous (1896 or earlier). Most of the
melodies employed in these works could be described as classic Lutheran
chorales, mostly dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. Brahms rst
encountered the rich heritage of the chorale in the Michaeliskirche,
Hamburg, the church of his baptism and con rmation. Both the pastor
primarius and deacon of the church were notable hymnologists, leaders
in the movement for the restoration of the texts of hymns that had been
mutilated and substantially rewritten in the later 18th century to make
them conform to the rationalist ideals of the Enlightenment. The senior
pastor (from 1819 until his retirement in 1848) was August Jakob Ram-
bach, who, among other things, wrote a study of Luther’s hymns34 and
compiled a massive, ve-volume anthology of hymns in a chronological
sequence.35 The deacon (from 1826) was Johannes Geffcken, a member
34
August Jakob Rambach, Ueber D. Martin Luthers Verdienst um den Kirchengesang: oder
Darstellung desjenigen, was er als Liturg, als Liederdichter und Tonsetzer zur Verbesserung des
öffentlichen Gottesdienstes geleistet hat; nebst einem aus den Originalen genommenen Abdrucke
sämmtlicher Lieder und Melodien Luthers, wie auch der Vorreden zu seinem Gesangbuche (Ham-
burg: Bohn, 1813; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972).
35
August Jakob Rambach, Anthologie christlicher Gesänge aus Jahrhunderten der Kirche:
nach der Zeitfolge geordnet und mit geschichtlichen Bemerkungen begleitet, 5 vols. (Altona: Ham-
merich, 1817–32).

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of an in uential Hamburg merchant family36 and the author of a num-

ber of important hymnological studies, one of them on 16th-century
Hamburg hymnals.37 Between 1832 and 1842 Rambach (chair) and
Geffcken were leading members of the commission charged to produce
a new hymnal that reversed the trends of the rationalist Hamburg hym-
nal of 1788. The new hymnal was published as Hamburgisches Gesangbuch
für den öffentlichen Gottesdienst und die häusliche Andacht. Mit des Rathes
Special-Privilegio (Hamburg: Meißner, 1843).3 8
Geffcken prepared the 15-year-old Brahms for con rmation in
1848 and in the process “became a good friend and awakened the
boy’s interest in Lutheran chorales and church music.”39 Undoubtedly
Geffcken would have used the classic Lutheran chorales as found in the
1843 Hamburgisches Gesangbuch in preparing young people for con rma-
tion, and thus it was this hymnal that formed Brahms’s primary under-
standing of the chorale tradition. Consequently, in his later recollection
to Ochs that his op. 45 was in some measure based on “a well known
chorale,” Brahms most likely had in mind one of the chorales that he
had encountered as a boy rather than one he had heard later in life. Sig-
ni cantly, Freu’ dich sehr, O meine Seele was not included in the 1843 Ham-
628 burgisches Gesangbuch but Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten was: No. 394
under the general rubric “Das Christliche Leben” (The Christian Life),
within the particular section “6. Vertrauen auf Gott und Ergebung in
seinem Willen” (Con dence in God and Surrender to His Will). Here is
another indication that Ochs may well have been correct in his recollec-
tion regarding the in uence of the chorale Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt
walten on Brahms’s op. 45. Certainly the rst stanza, with its reference to
36
Geffken’s brother Heinrich was a senator in the city, and both men were involved
in the deliberations that led to the separation between church and state in the city in the
middle part of the century; see Hans Georg Bergemann, Staat und Kirche in Hamburg
während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg: Wittig, 1958).
37
Johannes Geffcken, Gustav Adolphs Schwanengesang, nach den ältesten Drucken
hergestellt und mit literarhistorischen Anmerkungen begleitet, sammt den verschiedenen späteren
Erweiterungen des Liedes. Traur- und Trostlied auf Gustav Adolphs Tod, nach den Drucken von
1632–1633, nebst Beilagen, 2nd ed. (Hamburg: Perthes-Besser & Mauke, 1856); Johannes
Geffcken, Die hamburgischen niedersächsischen Gesangbücher des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts, kri-
tisch bearb. und mit einer Einleitung über das Kirchenlied und die Gesangbücher in Hamburg seit
der Reformation (Hamburg: Meissner, 1857). Geffcken was also a member of the hymnal
commission of the Eisenach Conference and issued his own draft hymnal for general
usage: Allgemeines evangelisches Gesangbuch (Hamburg: Perthes, 1853).
38 The same year Rambach published a small booklet on the hymn authors repre-
sented in the new Gesangbuch: August Jakob Rambach, Kurzgefasste Nachricht von den Ver-
fassern der Lieder im Hamburgischen Gesangbuche (Hamburg: Meissner, 1843). For the back-
ground, see Eduard Emil Koch, Geschichte des Kirchenlieds und Kirchengesangs der christlichen,
insbesondere der deutschen evangelischen Kirche, 3rd ed., Adolf Wilhelm Stoch and Richard
Lauxmann, eds. (Stuttgart: Belser, 1866–77), 7: 69–73.
39 MacDonald, Brahms, 6; see also Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz, 23–24.

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“aller Noth und Traurigkeit,” summarizes Brahms’s compilation of Bibli-

cal texts:
Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten If thou but suffer God to guide thee,
und hoffet auf ihn allezeit, and hope in him through all thy days,
den wird er wunderbar erhalten then he will wonderfully keep thee
in aller Noth und Traurigkeit. in mourning and in shadowed ways.
Wer Gott, dem allerhöchsten, traut, Who on God, the all-highest, trusts
der hat auf keinen Sand gebaut.40 on no sand his life constructs.41
The Text and Structure of Ein deutsches Requiem

As referred to above, the texts of the Musikalische Exequien and the
Actus tragicus of Schütz and Bach were to a greater or lesser extent based
on published models of assembled Biblical verses. The basic text of Ein
deutsches Requiem is different in that it was created by the composer him-
self as a sophisticated mosaic of verses from Luther’s German Bible.42
This does not mean, however, that in his selections Brahms was totally
unin uenced by the general nature of such published works of devo-
tion. The compilation of Biblical verses under various topics was an es-
tablished methodology, employed for example in textbooks used in 629
Protestant schools, the most long-lived and widely used being Leonard
Hutter’s Compendium, rst published in Latin in 1610, but by the 19th
century also available in German.43 Similarly, preparation for con rma-
tion meant learning Scripture proofs of the substance of Luther’s Small
Catechism. Many con rmation textbooks were little more than compila-
tions of Biblical verses arranged under the individual sections and sub-
sections of Luther’s catechism, and preparation for con rmation fol-
lowed the same methodology.44 At the time Brahms was prepared for
con rmation in 1848, there was a particular concern for the restoration
of such catechetical teaching, in reaction to the rationalist approaches
of earlier generations. Johannes Geffcken, the deacon of the Michael-
iskirche in Hamburg who prepared him for con rmation, was part of
this restoration movement and a few years later wrote a signi cant work
40
Hamburgisches Gesangbuch für den öffentlichen Gottesdienst und die häusliche Andacht.
Mit des Rathes Special-Privilegio (Hamburg: Meißner, 1860), 284–85.
41
First couplet based on Catherine Winkworth; otherwise my translation.
42
See Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 14–18.
43
Leonard Hutter: Compendium locorum theologicorum, ed. Wolgang Trillhaas (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1961). An example of a German translation is Leonard Hutter, Inbegriff der
Glaubens-Artikel aus heiligen Schrift und den symbolischen Büchern, trans. Carl Emil Francke
(Leipzig: Köhler, 1837).
44
See Michael Reu, Dr. Luther’s Small Catechism: A History of Its Origin, Its Distribution
and Its Use (Chicago: Wartburg, 1929), esp. 247–62.

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on the background of catechizing.45 The practice of drawing together

Biblical verses under speci c topics was thus part of Brahms’s Protestant
heritage,46 though the speci c choices in op. 45 remained his own.
Much has been made of the correspondence between Brahms and
Karl Martin Reinthaler, organist of Bremen Cathedral, who arranged
the rst performance of Ein deutsches Requiem in the cathedral in April
1868. Reinthaler had received the score, but before rehearsals began he
wrote to Brahms, on 5 October 1867, with the following comment and
suggestion:
You stand not only on religious but on purely Christian ground. Al-
ready the second number indicates the prediction of the return of the
Lord, and in the last number but one there is express reference to the
mystery of the resurrection of the dead, “we shall not all sleep.” For the
Christian mind, however, there is lacking the point on which every-
thing turns, namely the redeeming death of Jesus. Perhaps the passage
“death, where is thy sting” would be the best place to introduce this
idea, either brie y in the music itself before the fugue, or in a new
movement. Moreover, you say in the last movement, “blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,” that is, after Christ has
nished the work of redemption.47
630
In response Brahms made it clear that while he had considered such

verses as John 3: 16 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son . . .”), he had nevertheless carefully selected these Biblical
texts “because” as he wrote to Reinthaler in a letter dated 9 October
1867, “I am a musician, because I needed them, and because I cannot
45
Johannes Geffcken, Der Bildercatechismus des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts und die cate-
chetischen Haupstücke in dieser Zeit bis auf Luther (Leipzig: Weigel, 1855). Approaching 20
years earlier he had addressed the question of the differences in dividing the Ten Com-
mandments, which constitute the rst part of the Catechism: Johannes Geffcken, Über die
verschiedene Eintheilung des Decalogus, und den Einussderselben auf den Cultus: eine historisch-
kritische Untersuchung (Hamburg: Perthes-Besser & Mauke, 1838).
46
Daniel Beller-McKenna argues that “Robert Schumann sparked Brahms’s interest
in the Bible” in “Brahms, the Bible, and Post-Reformation Cultural Issues in Johannes
Brahms’s Later Settings of Biblical Texts, 1877–1896” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1994),
39 (see also the preceding discussion, 1–39, on which the conclusion is based). Given
Brahms’s Protestant background, especially his preparation for con rmation, this is some-
thing of an overstatement. This is not to deny Schumann’s in uence on Brahms, espe-
cially the Biblical overtones of his essay “Neue Bahnen” that Beller-McKenna perceptively
discusses. But this in uence was more a reawakening of his earlier encounter with Biblical
thought than a new discovery. Certainly Brahms’s concern with the Bible was intensi ed
around this time, as is demonstrated in the notebook of Biblical quotations he compiled
(Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek HIN 55.733), which includes texts he set in post-Requiem
works; see Beller-McKenna, op. cit., 44–72 (discussion), 225–31 (facsimile), and 232–44
(transcription and translation).
47
Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel, 3: 7; cited in Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 1.

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dispute or delete ‘from henceforth’ from my revered poets.” He also

added, regarding the title of his work, “I will admit that I could happily
omit ‘German’ and simply say ‘Human.’ ”48 There is much more here
than meets the eye. Reinthaler had studied theology before taking up
music as a profession.49 Brahms’s reference to himself as a “musician” is
clearly a coded message, meaning “I do not have a theological back-
ground like you, but . . .” Brahms then goes on to make a subtle but im-
portant point. He says he cannot “delete or dispute” the words “from
henceforth” from the passage “Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord from henceforth” because he has too much respect for the authors of
the Biblical texts he has chosen—“my revered poets” he calls them. This
reveals much about Brahms: He had a fundamental regard for the in-
tegrity of Scripture. Further, his statement that he could just as well call
his work “A Human Requiem” as “A German Requiem” was almost
certainly occasioned by Reinthaler’s theological presuppositions. The
Bremen organist had studied theology in Berlin. There he would have
come under the in uence of Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose existen-
tial and experiential theology fostered one of two opposed theological
schools of thought. On one hand, there was the progressive Erlangen
theology, in uenced by Schleiermacher, that was accused by its oppo- 631
nents of practicing a Christological reductionism that diminished the
content of Christianity. On the other hand, there was Neo-Lutheran
(Repristination) theology, a high church movement that was frequently
charged with a Romanizing tendency. It seems that in his response to
Reinthaler, Brahms was indicating that as a “musician” he was uncon-
cerned about such theological sophistries and that the Bible was good
enough for him.
There is the issue of what Hanns Christian Stekel calls “das christol-
ogische De zit” (the Christological de cit) of Ein deutsches Requiem.50
Reinthaler and the Bremen clergy had expectations that Brahms’s op.
45 did not ful l. They were looking for music that, if not a passion in
the traditional sense, at least presented in some way the signi cance of
the Christological event that is marked by Good Friday, the day appointed
for the Bremen rst performance. When Reinthaler could not persuade
Brahms to compose additional music, he and the Bremen cathedral
clergy arranged for further music to be heard with Ein deutsches Requiem
48
Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel, 3: 10; cited in Musgrave, Brahms: A German Re-
quiem, 1–2.
49
See Franz Gehring and Bernd Weichert, “Reinthaler, Karl (Martin),” The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (New York: Grove Dictionaries, 2001), 21:
168.
50 Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz, 164–66, 289–90.

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on that day: “Erbarme dich” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and “I know
that my Redeemer liveth,” “Behold the Lamb of God,” and “Hallelujah”
from Handel’s Messiah.5 1
But the Christological de cit of op. 45 is not a Christological ab-
sence. Even though the name of Christ is not mentioned in the text,
the structure of Ein deutsches Requiem is nevertheless Christocentric in
the sense that it is framed by the words of Christ, and each group of
words is a beatitude. The rst movement begins with “Selig sind die da
Leid tragen . . .” (Blessed are those that mourn . . . ; Matthew 5: 4). The
text of the last movement is “Selig sind die Toten . . .” (Blessed are
the dead . . . ; Revelation 14: 13), and Brahms contrives to make “Selig”
the nal word of the movement and therefore both the rst and last
word of the whole work. He does this by adding a coda based on the-
matic material from the rst movement, thereby underscoring the con-
nection between the two movements and making emphatic the cyclic
nature of the whole work. Movement 4, “Wie lieblich sind deine Woh-
nungen” (How lovely are your dwellings), the fulcrum on which the whole
work turns, is also a kind of beatitude, since it de nes the “Seligkeit”
(blessedness) of those who have died—those who are in heaven’s
632 “liebliche Wohnungen.” In German there is a direct connection with
this Psalm verse and the words of Christ in John 14: 2, “In my Father’s
house are many mansions”: in Luther’s German Bible it is rendered “In
meines Vaters Haus sind viel Wohnungen.” Thus words of Christ are
strongly implied in this pivotal movement. But movement 4 also sum-
marizes the “Seligkeit” of those who mourn, because they have the reas-
surance that their loved ones for whom they mourn are now in the
“liebliche Wohnungen.”
Between movements 1 and 4 are two movements that balance the
two movements between movements 4 and 7 in a carefully arranged
symmetry.5 2 Movements 2 and 6 are statements of human mortality: “All
esh is as grass . . .” (1 Peter 1: 24) and “For we have no abiding city . . .”
(Hebrews 13: 14). Both these movements encompass corporate human-
ity, both the dead and those who mourn for them. Movements 3 and 5,
on either side of the central movement (movt. 4), are personal rather
than corporate: “Lord, let me know my end . . .” (Psalm 9: 4) and “Now
you have sorrow . . .” ( John 16: 22). The former gives voice to the indi-
vidual mourner, while the latter is addressed to the mourner. Brahms
has thus created a symmetrical structure for Ein deutsches Requiem (out-
51
See Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 4–9.
52
There is a similar symmetry in Brahms’s later motet Warum ist das Licht gegeben?,
op. 74, no. 1; see Daniel Beller-McKenna, “The Great Warum?: Job, Christ, and Bach in a
Brahms Motet,” 19th-Century Music 19 (1996): 231–51, 237.

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lined below) which has af nities with that of Schütz’s Musikalische
Exequien.
1. The living are blessed

2. Mortality of both the living and the dead
3. Personal re ection addressed by the living
4. Heaven—for those who have died
and those who have yet to die
5. Personal comfort addressed to the living
6. Earthly homelessness of both the living and the dead
7. The dead are blessed
One reason why Ein deutsches Requiem has retained its popularity is that it
beautifully expounds the essential unity between the living and the dead:
The separation between them is merely temporary. Brahms has carefully
constructed this theme from his mosaic of Biblical texts, the thoughtful
and interrelated structure, and his sensitive musical setting of each
movement.
At two points, in the parallel movements 2 and 6, Brahms incorpo-
rates texts that signi cantly underscore his Protestant background and
somewhat temper the generally held opinion that the work re ects a 633
nonspeci c religious viewpoint. In movement 2 it is telling that he
should choose not to omit the verse “But the word of the Lord abides
forever” (1 Peter 1: 25). In its Latin form, Verbum Domini manet in aeter-
num, it became a widely used motto for the Protestant Reformation.53 It
conveyed the primary principle of Protestantism—that Scripture, as the
Word of God, and not the decrees of the church, was the sole source for
both theology and practical Christian living. It was found in numerous
books of theology and devotion and embodied in emblematic illustra-
tions of the nature of the Protestant faith. It was also incorporated into
the fabric of Protestant churches, being carved above doors or painted
onto pulpits and lecterns as well as being woven into the design of
53
See F. J. Stopp, “Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum, the Dissemination of a
Reformation Slogan,” Lutheran Quarterly 1 (1987): 54–61; and Ingetraut Ludolphy, et al.,
“VDMIAE: A Reformation ‘Rhyme’,” Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000): 209–12. The motto was
effectively summarized in the nal (4th) stanza of Luther’s Ein feste Burg: “Das Wort sie
lassen stahn . . . das Reich muß uns doch bleiben.” Thus when Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
performed movements of his father’s chorale cantata Ein feste Burg (BWV 80) in Halle
sometime around 1761–63, the Latin text of the concluding chorale began with a close
approximation of the Latin motto: “Manebit verbum Domini”; see Peter Wollny, “Wilhelm
Friedemann Bach’s Halle Performances of Cantatas by His Father,” in Bach Studies 2, ed.
Daniel R. Melamed (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 210–11. However, it is un-
likely that Brahms would have known this at the time he was composing op. 45, since the
information was not generally accessible until published as appendices in vol. 18 of the
Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, which was not issued until 1870.

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memorial plaques on the walls of those churches. It is inconceivable

that Brahms did not know about this widespread usage,54 and his incor-
poration of it into his mosaic of Biblical texts serves to emphasize the
work’s basic Protestantism. Similarly, in movement 6 (which parallels
movement 2) Brahms makes pointed use of one of the primary resur-
rection passages of the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15: 51–52 and
54–55, a Biblical passage that was universally part of Protestant burial
rites. Although the term “Requiem” has apparent Catholic connota-
tions, Ein deutsches Requiem, in its carefully planned symmetry involving
verses from Luther’s German Bible, was composed from an explicitly
Protestant viewpoint.
But was this symmetrical structure preconceived or was it something
of an afterthought? There are hints that Brahms began work on Ein
deutsches Requiem as early as 1859, though direct evidence only supports
a period of activity in the months following his mother’s death—that is,
during April 1865 and between February and August of the following
year, with revisions during the second half of 1866. Older Brahms schol-
arship emphasized the earlier possibility, but more recent writers sup-
port the later period of composition.55 By April 1865 he had decided on
634 the title, and much of the work had been at least planned if not com-
posed. In a letter to Clara Schumann, dated 24 April 1865, Brahms
wrote:
If it is not too late let me beg you not to show the choral piece (Wie
lieblich) to Joachim. In any case it is probably the weakest part56 in the
said Deutsches Requiem. But it may have vanished into thin air before you
come to Baden, just have a look at the beautiful words with which it be-
gins. It is in F minor without violins but accompanied by a harp and
other beautiful things . . . I compiled the text from passages from the
Bible; the chorus I sent you is number four. The second is in C minor
54
It is likely that the motto was visible at various places in the Michaeliskirche, but
the church, built between 1751 and 1762, was destroyed by re in 1906. A pencil drawing
of the interior, dating from 1858, exists, but the area around the pulpit is too small to re-
veal such detail; the drawing is reproduced in Horst Lutter, Die Michaeliskirche in Hamburg:
Der Anteil der Baumeister Prey, Sonnin und Heumann an ihrer Gestaltung (Hamburg: Wittig,
1966), opposite p. 80.
55
See Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 4–9; Daniel Beller-McKenna, “The Scope
and Signi cance of the Choral Music,” in The Cambridge Companion to Brahms, ed. Michael
Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 171–94, esp. 179; George S. Bozarth
and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
2nd ed., 4: 180–227. esp. 196–97.
56
That “Wie lieblich” should be considered as the “weakest part” by the composer
seems strange, given its wide use as an independent work by subsequent generations. But
Brahms, with his comment about its possible disintegration, and his concern that it should
not yet be seen by Joachim, was probably indicating that the movement was not yet in its
nished form.

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(later B minor) and is in march time. I hope that a German text of this
sort will please you as much as the usual Latin one. I am hoping to pro-
duce a sort of whole out of the thing and trust that I shall retain
enough courage and zest to carry it through.57
The completed score is dated “Baden Baden summer 1866”; a perfor-

mance of the rst three movements took place in Vienna on 1 Decem-
ber 1867; and the rst public performance was conducted by Brahms in
Bremen Cathedral on 10 April 1868, which was Good Friday. Only six
movements were heard on that occasion,58 movements 1–4 and 6–7, the
implication being that movement 5 had not been composed, or at best
not fully composed, at this time. In the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbiblio-
thek there is a manuscript leaf on which the complete text of the seven
movements (in sequence) appears in Brahms’s hand. The later move-
ments were subsequently renumbered, omitting movement 5.59 It there-
fore appears that Brahms either had not completed the movement or
for some reason had suppressed it from the Bremen performance.60 Ei-
ther way, the document suggests that the symmetrical structure was no
afterthought but represented Brahms’s original conception of the work.
635
The Question of Genre
Ein deutsches Requiem is not really a Requiem as such and is certainly
not passion music, even though its rst performance was given during
Holy Week. It was clearly not composed for Good Friday and did not
57
Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1: 184–85; for Clara’s response, see
ibid., 1: 185–86.
58
Ein deutsches Requiem was not his only work to receive trial performances; see Mar-
git L. McCorkle, “The Role of Trial Performances for Brahms’s Orchestral and Large
Choral Works: Sources and Circumstances,” in Brahms Studies: Analytical and Historical Per-
spectives. Papers Delivered at the International Brahms Conerfence Washington DC 5–8 May 1983,
ed. George S. Bozarth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 295–328, esp. 306–9 for the trial per-
formances of Ein deutsches Requiem.
59
The page is reproduced in Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 11.
60
See the discussion in Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 9–13. Musgrave’s posi-
tion is shared by other Brahms scholars. However, Siegfried Kross has argued to the con-
trary that the draft was written after six movements (movts. 1–4, 6–7) were composed, i.e.,
when Brahms was composing movement 5. Kross therefore interprets the document as an
aid in determining where to place the additional movement; see Siegfried Kross, Die Chor-
werk von Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Hesse, 1958), 521–22. The manuscript of op. 45 that
Brahms sent to his publisher, J. M. Rieter-Biedermann, Hamburg, in May 1868, did not in-
clude movement 5, which was supplied later; see Friedrich Georg Zeileis, “Two Manuscript
Sources of Brahms’s German Requiem,” Music & Letters 50 (1979): 149–55. The single-
leaf manuscript text in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, which Kross argues was
written when Brahms was composing movement 5, was more likely to have been drawn up
later with the engraver in mind, indicating which movements were to hand and where the
additional movement was to appear in the published score.

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employ recognizable liturgical texts. But did Brahms have another occa-
sion in mind that would have been more appropriate for such a work as
Ein deutsches Requiem?
In Lutheran Germany a distinctive tradition of memorializing the
departed developed quite early in the Reforming movement of the 16th
century. The Catholics had All Souls Day, observed on November 1, but
this was too closely connected with speci c Catholic theology regarding
purgatory and the departed for it to be observed within Protestantism. It
was therefore abolished, though there was still the need to deal with the
issue of human mortality in an appropriate Biblical manner. The cycle
of the church year began with the First Sunday in Advent and ended
with the last Sunday after Trinity (now designated as a “Sunday after
Pentecost” or a “Sunday in Ordinary Time”). At the end of one church
year and the beginning of the next, the Gospel lections spoke about be-
ing prepared for judgment and the afterlife. Thus the last Sunday of the
church year became the day when loved ones who had died that year
were memorialized. One of the earliest examples of this development
was the 1540 church order of Brandenburg, which directed that on this
Sunday the lives of those who had died during that year should be spe-
636 cially commemorated with appropriate sermons. In 1556 the church or-
der for Waldeck it is called the “Fest des jüngsten Tages” (The Festival of
the Last Day).61 In the course of time it became known popularly as
“Totensonntag” (Sunday of the Dead), “Totenfeier” (Celebration of the
Dead), or “Totenfest” (Festival of the Dead). Pertinent sermons were
preached and special music was performed, usually on various Biblical
texts concerning human mortality and the afterlife, such as those assem-
bled by Luther, Moller, Olearius, and others. But it was not until the
19th century that the observance entered into the popular religious life
of Germany, following the directive of Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia
in 1816. By the middle of the century it had spread throughout most of
Germany, taking on a folk-religion identity.62 Some of the clergy were
uncomfortable with the phenomenon of a Totensonntag in which many
who participated were rarely seen in or near churches throughout the
rest of the year. Various customs developed, such as tidying up the church-
yard on the day before, polishing the gravestones, and decorating them
with evergreens and other items. On the morning of Totensonntag, it
was customary for the names of all who had died in the parish during
the church year to be read out in the course of the service, and the
church might thus be full as family members assembled to hear the
61
See W. Jannasch, “Totensonntag,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd
ed., ed. Kurt Galling, et al. (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1957–65), 6: 956–57.
62
See Georg Rietschel, Lehrbuch der Liturgik (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1900–
1909), 1: 212–14.

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names of their loved ones being read by the pastor. In the afternoon it
was also customary in cities and larger towns for suitable memorial mu-
sic to be performed in the churches—music often styled as an “oratorio”
with a text comprising Bible verses and stanzas of chorales.
Brahms must have known about this observance, since it was wide-
spread in north Germany. Indeed, his Begräbnisgesang (Burial song), op.
13, a work that has close af nities with Ein deutsches Requiem, was com-
posed in November 1858, the month in which Totensonntag was usually
observed. The Begräbnisgesang is a setting of Luther’s revision of Michael
Weisse’s Nun laßt uns den Leib begraben (Now we lay the body in the grave),
which is, as stated above, the classic Lutheran funeral hymn.
When Brahms sat down to compose Ein deutsches Requiem—in
memory of his mother, and also to some extent in memory of Robert
Schumann—was the observance of Totensonntag at the back of his
mind? After all, he was not writing passion music that centers on Christ
as redeemer but rather music of compassion that centers on the words
of Christ the comforter.
Jürgen Heidrich, following leads in Arnold Schering’s history of the
oratorio,63 has argued that rather than being in uenced by speci c
Protestant compositions by Schütz, Bach, and others, Brahms’s work has 637
more similarities with contemporary memorial oratorios, particularly
Hermann Küster’s Die ewige Heimath (The Eternal Home) and Friedrich
Wilhelm Markull’s Das Gedächtnis der Entschlafenen (The Remembrance
of Those Who Sleep).64 Küster’s Die ewige Heimath (1861) is similar to
Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem nach Worten der heiligen Schrift in that it
was similarly subtitled—Oratorium nach dem Worten der heiligen Schrift
(Oratorio according to the words of Holy Scripture)—but dissimilar in
its tripartite structure that re ects loci of dogmatic theology: Der Tod,
Auferstehung, Jüngstes Gericht (Death, Resurrection, Last Judgment),65
categories that were too speci c for Brahms’s religious sensibilities.
However, the similarities between Markull’s Das Gedächtnis der Entschlafe-
nen (op. 34), published in Erfurt and Leipzig by G. W. Körner (ca.
1847),66 and Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem are striking.67 Although its
29 movements include non-Scriptural texts, such as stanzas of chorales,
it nevertheless is structured around signi cant Bible verses. One in par-
ticular is foundational in that it appears not only in the rst and last
63
Arnold Schering, Geschichte des Oratoriums (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1911;
repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), 429, 458–59.
64
Jürgen Heidrich, “Zwischen religiösem Bekenntnis und nationaler Emphase: Ein
deutsches Requiem (op. 45) von Johannes Brahms und sein Gattungskontext,” Neues musik-
wissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 8 (1999): 137–57.
65 Ibid., 143–51.
66
A copy is in the British Library, shelfmark E.1648.
67 Heidrich, “Zwischen religiösem Bekenntnis und nationaler Emphase,” 151–53.

37.163.137.41 on Fri, 12 Feb 2021 10:08:59 UTC
movements (1 and 29) but in an interior portion as well (movement 5):

“Alles Fleisch ist wie Gras und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des
Grases Blumen” (All esh is grass and the human splendor is like the
ower of the eld; 1 Peter 1: 24), the same text that Brahms used in the
second movement of his op. 45. And in movement 29, immediately fol-
lowing 1 Peter 1: 24, Markull sets 1 Peter 1: 25, “Aber des Herren Wort
bleibet in Ewigkeit” (But the word of the Lord abides in eternity), two
verses that are similarly kept together in Brahms’s second movement.
But there are other correspondences: “Selig sind die Toten, die in dem
Herrn Sterben” (Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; Revelation
14: 13) in the nal movement of Brahms op. 45 is movement 21 in
Markull’s op. 34; and “Die mit Thränen säen, werden mit Freuden ern-
ten” (They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy; Psalm 126: 5–6) of Brahm’s
first movement is found in Markull’s 13th. These correspondences seem
to suggest that Brahms knew of Markull’s oratorio.68 If so, then “In
meines Vaters Haus sind viele Wohnungen” (In my Father’s house are
many dwelling-places; John 14: 2), movement 28 of Markull’s op. 34,
may well have been the inspiration behind Brahms’s choice of “Wie
lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (How lovely are thy dwellings; Psalm
638 84: 1–2, 4; see the comments above). Markull’s oratorio also contains
“Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt” (For God so loved the world; John 3:
16), a text that as Brahms reported to Reinthaler he had considered but
had decided not to include.69
There are further connections between the two works. It is signi -
cant that Markull began and ended his oratorio with the same basic text,
“Alles Fleisch ist wie Gras,” which again may have in uenced Brahms to
frame his Requiem with the words “Selig sind.” Markull gives the same
music to “Alles Fleisch ist wie Gras” in each of the three movements in
which the words occur, a choral unison in octaves; the same device is
found in Brahms’s setting of the same words (see Ex. 5). Brahms’s set-
ting is in , rather than Markull’s , which is possibly the reason why he
added “es” to the Biblical text—“Alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras”—so that
the strong beats were associated with equally strong syllables. Otherwise
there are marked similarities between the two settings of the same text:
Brahms: Denn | al - les | Fleisch es | ist wie | Gras

Markull: Al - les | Fleisch ist wie | Gras
68
Markull’s oratorio begins with an instrumental “Introduction über den Choral:
‘O Traurigkeit.’ ” That Brahms composed the chorale prelude for organ on O Traurigkeit
(WOO 7) by 1858, the year he composed his Begräbnisgesang (op. 13), might imply that he
had encountered Markull’s oratorio by this year.
69
See p. 631n48.

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leaver
example 5. Markull’s setting of 1 Peter 1: 24

Markull, Op. 34, mm. 1–9
Al - les Fleisch ist wie Gras, wie Gras, und al - le
Herr - lich - keit den Man - schen wie des Gra - ses Blum - me...
What is most revealing in this context is the subtitle of Markull’s op.

34: Oratorium für die Todtenfeier am letzten Sonntage des Kirchenjahres (Ora-
torio for the Celebration of the Dead on the Last Sunday of the Church
Year). The work was composed for this annual observance, unequivo-
cally identi ed both by its popular title and location in the liturgical cal- 639
ender. If Brahms was in uenced by Markull’s oratorio, as seems likely,
then it is equally probable that he also had in mind the annual obser-
vance of the Totenfest when he was composing Ein deutsches Requiem.
Such works were later manifestations of a tradition of Protestant funer-
ary music that had its beginnings in Luther’s Latin Responsoria and the
early Lutheran church orders of the 16th century. It was developed in
subsequent generations by such composers as Schütz and Bach, and later
expanded under in uences such as nationalism and post-Romanticism
to become a nonliturgical musical form that was nevertheless associated
with a particular Sunday in the church year. Thus Brahms’s Ein deutsches
Requiem, along with similar compositions by such composers as Küster
and Markull before him and Max Reger after him,70 belongs to the par-
ticular genre of memorial music composed for Totensonntag.71
Westminster Choir College of Rider University
70
Between 1903 and 1905, Max Reger—a Catholic with strong Lutheran connections
—composed a sequence of four chorale cantatas for the church year: No. 4, O wie selig seid
ihr doch, ihr Frommen was composed “zum Totenfest.”
71
Ein deutsches Requiem was quickly received as the music for Totensonntag. Soon
after its publication, the most common day on which the work was performed in Protes-
tant Germany was on the afternoon of Totensonntag, a strong tradition that continues to
this day, especially in North Germany.

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ABSTRACT
Brahms’s German Requiem stands at the end of a long line of
Lutheran funerary music. Luther reworked funeral responsories into a
new, totally Biblical form, and later Lutherans collected anthologies of
Biblical texts on death and dying. Such sources were used by later com-
posers, including Schütz and Bach, to compose funeral pieces on Bibli-
cal texts together with appropriate chorales. Brahms’s opus 45 is similar
in that its text is made up of Biblical verses assembled by the composer,
and connections may be drawn between chorale usage in this work and
the composer’s Protestant upbringing in Hamburg on one hand, and in
his knowledge of two cantatas by Bach (BWV 21 and 27), on the other.
The text and structure of the work accord with general, north Ger-
man Protestantism, and the famous letter to Reinthaler, which many
have taken as a demonstration of Brahms’s general humanistic tenden-
cies, shows Brahms to be standing aloof from the theological controver-
sies of his day in favor of a basic understanding of Biblical authors. Part
of the problem was that the rst performance was scheduled for Good
Friday in Bremen cathedral; Reinthaler, the organist, and the cathedral
clergy would have preferred passion music of some kind and what
640
Brahms gave them was something different.
Brahms surely knew of the distinctive Lutheran observance of
“Totensonntag,” the commemoration of the dead on the last Sunday in
the church year (the Sunday before Advent). There are many similari-
ties between Brahms’s Requiem and Friedrich Wilhelm Markull’s Das
Gedächtnis der Entschlafen (The Remembrance of those Who Sleep) of
ca. 1847. Since Markull’s work is subtitled Oratorium für die Todtenfeier am
letzten Sonntage des Kirchenjahres (Oratorio for the Celebration of the
Dead on the Last Sunday of the Church Year), it is possible that Brahms
had the same occasion in mind when composing his German Requiem.

37.163.137.41 on Fri, 12 Feb 2021 10:08:59 UTC

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Brahms's Opus 45 and German Protestant Funeral Music

Author(s): Robin A. Leaver

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M uch has been written about Brahms’s Ein

An earlier form of this essay was given as the second Annual

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St. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians [1 Thess. 4: 13–18] not to sorrow

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occasion, the result was a sequence of different verses of Scripture

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seems likely that he was inspired by a speci c handbook, Martin

Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem (Lüneburg: Stern, 1630), 199.

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Johann Sebastian Bach

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(Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 127–28.

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somewhat diminished the signi cance of Lutheran orthodoxy in the

Chorale Connections in Ein deutsches Requiem

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Some have either doubted the veracity of Ochs’ s account—because

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example 1. Ochs’s comparison of the ground motive of Brahms’s  rst

Wer nur den lie - ben Gott (läßt walten)

Wer nur den lie - ben Gott lä ßt wal - ten...

An - fang wollt ich fast ver - za - gen...

chorale connection at some length and, while cautiously admitting that

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example 3. Similarities between Bach’s Cantata 27 and Brahms’s opus

Wer weiss wie na - he mit mein En - de...

Denn al - les Fleisch es ist wie Gras...

Brahms, op. 45/2, mm. 22–25

in ), especially the con gurations of the respective orchestral accompa-

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example 4. Similar pivotal points in Bach’s Cantata 21 and Brahms’s

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of an in uential Hamburg merchant family36 and the author of a num-

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“aller Noth und Traurigkeit,” summarizes Brahms’s compilation of Bibli-

The Text and Structure of Ein deutsches Requiem

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on the background of catechizing.45 The practice of drawing together

In response Brahms made it clear that while he had considered such

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dispute or delete ‘from henceforth’ from my revered poets.” He also

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1. The living are blessed

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memorial plaques on the walls of those churches. It is inconceivable

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The completed score is dated “Baden Baden summer 1866”; a perfor-

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movements (1 and 29) but in an interior portion as well (movement 5):

Brahms: Denn | al - les | Fleisch es | ist wie | Gras

seems likely that he was inspired by a speci c handbook, Martin

somewhat diminished the signi cance of Lutheran orthodoxy in the

example 1. Ochs’s comparison of the ground motive of Brahms’s rst

in ), especially the con gurations of the respective orchestral accompa-

of an in uential Hamburg merchant family36 and the author of a num-