Search - Exultate Festival Choir & Orchestra :: A German Requiem (sung in English)

Exultate's full-orchestral recording of The German Requiem by Johannes Brahms is one of only two known recordings sung in English available on CD today. This performance includes a festival Chorus and Orchestra of over 120 musicians and soloists Anna Haagenson (soprano) and William Strom (baritone). The work presented on this recording is the most extensive work of Johannes Brahms, his monument of choral expression, A German Requiem. The composition, Opus 45, was begun in the 1850¹s with sketches of themes for the D minor Symphony which was never completed. Various theories have been advanced about the immediate reason for writing the Requiem when he did, but there is no definitive personal event which one can point to as the catalyst for the inspiration. However, there seems to be a consensus that Brahms was influenced to some extent by the death of his mother, Christine, and his close friend, Robert Schumann. He may have acquired the idea for A German Requiem from Schumann¹s diary. Some years before he died, Schumann had written about an idea for a German Requiem with a text which was not the traditional Roman Catholic funeral sequence, but one with words of comfort drawn directly from Scripture. By 1861, Brahms had completed four movements in the form of a funeral cantata, but it was not until 1868 that all seven movements were completed. The first performance was given in February of 1869 in Leipzig. In choral music, it is not always true that the key to comprehension can be found in the value of the text which has been set. Music often transcends the boundaries of the words and gives even a higher quality and meaning not able to be grasped in the text. This, however, is definitely not the case in Brahms' A German Requiem. Here, the more complete and mature understanding of the work lies in the Word. It is a very careful and sensitive borrowing from Scripture of passages dealing with the subject of the frailty of humans. Brahms departs dramatically from the traditional Latin Requiem text in that he avoids the cataloging of the horrors of Judgment Day and the wrath of God which will surely envelop the unbeliever. Instead, he dwells not on the dead, but on the living in a series of beautifully woven passages concerned with comfort, faith, consolation, joy, heavenly bliss, victory over death, and finally - eternal peace. To be sure, the earthly suffering and nothingness of humans are portrayed along with the ugliness of death and the grave, but Brahms' own choice of text transforms this despair into glorious victory. It is a path of hope, promise, and comfort for the living, a preparation for one's own death.