Naxos to release Cecilia's recording of "The Construction of Boston."
The CD of Composer in Residence Scott Wheeler's opera will be released during 2008. The libretto, as well as program notes from the April 2007 concert performance, are available now.

"Teeters and his classy cast and players offered the first truly satisfying performance I’ve heard... If I ever forget what a superb programmer he's been over his 39 years of directing Boston Cecilia, remind me of this concert."

-Lloyd Schwartz, The Boston Phoenix, Apr. 5, 2007. Read the review!

Introducing New Music: Recent and Right Now, presenting the music of up-and-coming composers, in collaboration with Scott Wheeler. Annual series debuts in June 2008!

Ein deutsches Requiem

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The word "requiem" usually refers to the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, which begins with the Latin phrase "Requiem aeternam dona eis domine" ("Grant them eternal rest, O Lord"). Settings of the Latin Requiem text were liturgical works for the Catholic service, intended for use in a service of prayer for the soul of the deceased. Brahms conceived the extraordinary idea of creating his own text, selecting Biblical passages that do not correspond to the funeral liturgy of any church, but that nonetheless represent a deeply felt response to the central problem of human existence. To distinguish his work from the Catholic Mass for the Dead, he called it Ein deutsches Requiem ("A German Requiem").

It is not clear where Brahms got the idea for an original, non-liturgical choral piece of this sort, but early work on the composition somewhat relieved the melancholy that haunted him at the loss of his friend Robert Schumann. In 1854, long before he had any thought of writing a large choral piece, Brahms had worked on music that was to be a symphony in D minor, though it became his First Piano Concerto. One theme originally intended for the symphony, which he composed between 1857 and 1859, resurfaced in what is now the second movement of the German Requiem. In the fall of 1861 he laid out the text of a four-movement cantata but failed to develop it for four years. Then, on February 2, 1865, a telegram from his brother informed Brahms that his mother had suffered a stroke and was dying. At once he departed for Hamburg but arrived too late to see her. Haunted and depressed, he turned to creative work to exorcize the thought of death. Within two months he had completed the first, second, and fourth movements of the Requiem. Then his heavy concert schedule intervened. It took until August 1866 to complete the remainder of the work, with the exception of the fifth movement.

By September Brahms had played the score for Clara Schumann, his lifelong confidante and sounding-board. She wrote in her diary, "Johannes has been playing me some magnificent movements out of a Requiem of his own and a string quartet in C minor. The Requiem...is full of tender and again daring thoughts. I cannot feel clear as to how it will sound, but in myself it sounds glorious."

Three movements performed in Vienna in December 1867, in a concert devoted to Schubert's memory, met with mixed results. The Viennese found it too austere for their taste. The third movement was actually booed (though the fault was partly that of the timpanist, who played so loudly in the extended fugue that he drowned everyone else out). The entire six-movement work received its first performance under the composer's baton in Bremen Cathedral on Good Friday in 1868. Here Brahms achieved the first great triumph of his life -- and for that reason no doubt the sweetest. But the score was still not finished. Soon after the premiere, he added the fifth movement, with soprano solo, which, as its text indicates, is a tribute to his mother's memory. From its premiere in Leipzig in February 1869, the piece quickly attained the rank of a classic; it was heard in Germany twenty times within the first year.

Brahms brilliantly assembled the text from Luther's translation of the Bible-from the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha. He was apparently determined to create a universal text, one that would not follow any particular liturgy, and he avoided even any reference to the words "Jesus" or "Christ" (though some English translations of the work undo him in that point). His intention is indicated by a letter he wrote to the director of music at the Bremen Cathedral before the premiere, explaining that "German" referred only to the language in which it was sung; he would have gladly called it "A Human Requiem." He captured a universal human experience rather than a narrow doctrinal one and addressed the living, the bereaved, rather than the dead. The music achieves a symphonic breadth and strength that marks an important turning point in his work while at the same time underlining the expressive significance of his text. At every point we encounter the classically minded composer, whose power comes not from theatrical display but rather from carefully balanced control of harmony and rhythm, melody, and tone color.

Brahms lends a somber color to the first movement by omitting the violins, piccolo, clarinets, one of his two pair of horns, trumpets, tuba, and timpani entirely and by subdividing the violas and cellos. The first three notes of the chorus introduce a tiny musical cell that will recur in many guises to bind the work together. Heard first in the choral sopranos at their opening "Selig sind" ("Blessed are they..."), it consists simply of the small leap of a third followed by another step in the same direction. A contrasting phrase ("mit Tränen") contains the same cell in reverse; as the tears turn to joy, the harp, an instrument rarely found in Brahms, surges forth with a splash of bright sound.

The second movement begins with a slow marchlike passage in a triple meter. The violins enter for the first time in the piece, and in a high register, as if to emphasize the fact of their appearance at last. The timpani quietly sound ominous triplets. The chorus sings in unison first softly, then in full voice as the march theme is repeated. This is the music that Brahms had composed for and then removed from his early D-minor symphony. The consoling call for patience is brightened by the woodwinds, especially at the vivid depiction of "the early rain" in the flute and harp. The somber funeral march recurs and rises to a climax. This time it turns into a wonderfully energetic chorus on "the ransomed of the Lord." For all its power, it ends with a magical tranquility.

The baritone solo begins the third movement with a darkly urgent recitative in dialogue with the chorus. The fears and doubts grow. To the words, "In what shall I hope?" the woodwinds sing pulsating triplets that recall a passage late in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (at the reference to the one who lives "above the stars"). Rising from the depths, the chorus asserts, "My hope is in thee." The line quickly grows in power to a radiant climax closing in a double fugue-one subject in the voices, another in the orchestra-over a D pedal-point (it was here that the timpanist overdid his exertions in the Vienna premiere of the movement and drowned out everything with his sustained roll).

The fourth movement is harmonically and expressively in a new world. It is a gentle mid-point to the entire work, filled with a sublime tranquility, an easy calm. Not surprisingly it is far and away the best-known passage from the entire score.

It is followed by the afterthought that finally and truly completed the work. Like the third movement, the fifth features a soloist, but the contrast could hardly be more striking. The baritone had sung of grief, of doubt, even of despair. Here, in a very bright key, the soprano sings of maternal consolation.

The opening of the sixth movement reverts somewhat to the uncertainties of the third-at least in the weird harmonic progressions that accompany the baritone's description of the "mystery" to come-the harmonies themselves range mysteriously from C minor to F-sharp minor, at the opposite end of the tonal spectrum, and back. This approach completely avoids any element that might be overtly theatrical. Brahms's assertion of life's victory over death and the sarcastic taunting cry, "O death, where is thy sting?" are enormously forceful, but the strength comes from such classical elements as the sturdy harmonic progressions, not from operatic fanfares on extra trumpets such as those found in the Requiem settings of Berlioz or Verdi. In any case, Brahms's treatment of the "last trump" is inevitably colored by the fact that Luther's German version calls for a last "Posaune," or trombone, and it is the three trombones and tuba that first announce the great moment. The excitement is extended into a powerful and spacious fugue in C major. The first three notes of the fugue subject are yet another version of the basic thematic cell of the German Requiem, and, indeed, the figure appears throughout the subject. Brahms employs this tiny cell to accomplish the two fortissimo climaxes in the fugue: beginning low in the cellos, basses, trombones, and tuba, a rising figure consisting entirely of repetitions of the basic three-note cell marches purposefully through the entire orchestral texture until picked up by the voices ("zu nehmen Preis") and carried by the higher instruments to the most powerful and sustained chord in the entire movement. A stretto leads to a final, forceful statement.

The final movement is overtly like the first: it returns to the home key, starts with the basic thematic cell (in double bass and cello), and begins with the same word, "Selig" ("Blessed"). But the work of consolation has been accomplished: the blessing is now for the dead who have gone to their rest. The somber orchestral colors of the opening are entirely lacking as Brahms reinstates the clarinets, the second pair of horns, and the violins. The final section of the movement is a magical and subtle reworking of material from the opening movement. To the melody originally used for "Blessed are they that mourn," the chorus sings, in a remote key, "Blessed are the dead." Working round to the home key of F major, the sopranos soar to a brilliant high A (as at the end of the first movement). Here the harps enter for the first time since the middle of the second movement, beginning low under the sopranos highest note (on "Herrn" -- "Lord") and rising to an ethereal conclusion over the final choral murmurs of "selig" ("blessed").

The German Requiem is Brahms's largest work in any medium. Here, for the first time he not only established himself as a mature composer in the eyes of his contemporaries but also wrote one of those special choral works that singers return to with as much delight as audiences, a unique masterpiece of technique and affect expressing the universal longings of mankind.

A final historical note: on December 3, 1888, at the Boston Music Hall, Cecilia - under the direction of founder B.J. Lang - presented the Boston premiere of the Requiem. The chorus hasn't performed this masterpiece since, until this concert.

- Steven Ledbetter

The Boston Cecilia performed this piece at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston on March 16, 2003.

© 2003 Steven Ledbetter. All rights reserved.

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