humanus

So, this choir I'm in just finished working on Brahms' German Requiem.  It's a magnificent piece; if you've never heard it before I recommend you look it up. (The entire requiem is about an hour long, so maybe make a playlist on grooveshark or youtube and just listen to it while you're working on homework or reading...classical music is good for you anyway.)

I'm not going to attempt to conduct any sort of musical analysis here because I'm not much of a musician, but I still think that I can appreciate the music sufficiently to understand what Brahms and I now share.

A nice picture of Brahms looking classy

Although it is not certain, many believe that Brahms' inspiration to compose the piece stemmed from the death of his mother in 1865.  The piece was begun later that same year and finished in 1868.  It is also possible that some of his motivation came from the Schumann family, who a decade previous to this composition had an encounter or two with death.  The second movement is believed to contain some previously discarded material Brahms had written in response to Clara Schumann's mental collapse in 1854.

The work is unique among requiems because while most requiems are traditionally a 'mass for the dead', Brahms' requiem is aimed more toward the living. The German text is brought chiefly from the Bible and communicates a journey through grief and comfort as Brahms (or perhaps the singers, or the audience, or anyone involved at all) learns to put his trust in God and any lingering fear concerning death is converted into a strong faith.

As we prepared to sing this requiem, our choir actually met death a few times; the grandfather of one of our members passed away and she participated in our performance via funeral.  In addition to that, we were informed during our final rehearsal that one of the professors in the music department at our university had been found in his office that morning, dead from a heart attack.  He was young and shouldn't have been at risk for a heart attack, but nevertheless it took him, only a short time after a similar situation took his brother. 

Another music professor told us of his experiences with the Requiem.  When he first prepared to perform it, the time coincided with the death of both his father and his musical mentor, both within a day of each other.  For him, the Requiem offered comfort as he adjusted to life without his fathers.  The next time he participated in the Requiem, he was asked to substitute for someone else who would not be able to perform due to a death.  As he told us of these experiences, he couldn't have known that his colleague was about to leave this realm as well.

It seems that as we immersed ourselves in Brahms' Requiem, we also found ourselves surrounded by news of death. Perhaps there was something about the Requiem that God (or the Universe or whatever you may believe in) found appropriate to call people home with. It seems plausible, but I think if this were the case, paranormal psychologists would be all over the Brahms' Requiem Curse, and...I don't think that's a thing.

What I think is more likely is that the Requiem changed our perspectives and made us more aware of death.  It's a part of life that we sometimes shy away from or find uncomfortable, but in actuality, death is something very dependent upon life.  If you've read Markus Zusaks' The Book Thief, perhaps you'll remember the final chapters of Liesel's life as she embraces death as an old friend.  It's not a particularly happy subject, but it is a  very personal one.

Read The Book Thief.  It's phenomenal.

After journeying through death upon death and realizing that we must all make that journey on our own one day, I understand at least one reason why Brahms later remarked that he would gladly have called the work "Ein menschliches Requiem", or "A Human Requiem", referring more to the audience and the experience of the piece than its distinctive language.