Brahms and the German Spirit

BRAHMS
AND THE

GERMAN SPIRIT

Daniel Beller-McKenna

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2004
 Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beller-McKenna, Daniel.
Brahms and the German spirit / Daniel Beller-McKenna.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-01318-2 (alk. paper)
1. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897—Political and social views.
3. Music—Germany—19th century—History and criticism.
4. Nationalism in music. I. Title.
ML410.B8B42 2004
780′.92—dc22 2004040503

Designed by Gwen Nefsky Frankfeldt

 To my parents,
Anne Scott Beller
and
E. Kuno Beller
 Contents

Preface ix

1 Introduction: Brahms and the German Spirit 1

2 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 31

3 Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45, and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 65

4 The Triumphlied, Op. 55, and the Apocalyptic Moment 98

5 Gebet einer König: National Prayers in the

Fest- und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109 133
6 Beyond the End 165

Appendix: Longer Musical Examples 195

Notes 209

Index 239
 Preface

This book highlights the intersection of religion and nationalism in the mu-
sic of Johannes Brahms, particularly as it manifests itself in his large-scale
sacred choral music. Although nationalism is a subject that arises more
commonly in discussions of his contemporary Richard Wagner, Brahms’s
musical style, his aesthetic, and his compositional choices were also strongly
determined by his identity as a German. This view runs counter to the tra-
ditional understanding of Brahms’s place in music and cultural history;
Brahms’s music has long been valued for its classicizing detachment from
its cultural milieu. Accordingly, his instrumental compositions are deemed
models of “absolute” music, whose meaning is self-derived, independent of
its time and place, while his vocal works—especially the more public large-
scale choral works—are ascribed universal meaning in nearly all accounts
by modern writers. This book challenges the universality of these pieces, ar-
guing instead for their German-ness.
In comparison to the overtly nationalistic element in Wagner’s musical
legacy, the German elements in Brahms’s style have been easy to overlook
and, I argue, have been deliberately downplayed since the second third of
the twentieth century. But nationalism comes in many guises, and the lack of
an overt political agenda on Brahms’s part does not obviate the need to un-
derstand how nationalism affected his works. For Brahms, nationalism is
expressed more clearly in cultural terms, and this point emerges most poi-
gnantly in three large-scale choral works on biblical texts: Ein deutsches Re-
quiem, op. 45; the Triumphlied, op. 55; and the Fest- und Gedenksprüche,
op. 109. Using these three works as a core repertoire, I focus on the ne-
glected intersection of nationalism and spirituality in Brahms’s music. To be
sure, many other works are adduced along the way in support of my argu-
ments, and the pieces on which I have chosen to focus should be understood
x Preface

only as the most fruitful case studies. Rather than providing the final word
on the subject, with this book I hope to build on the significant work already
done by scholars such as Leon Botstein and Margaret Notley toward bring-
ing the discussion of Brahms’s music more closely into the context of late-
nineteenth-century politics. If my own work shifts the focus away from Vi-
enna toward Germany, it is intended only as a complementary point of view,
not as a contestation.
The intersection of religion and nationalism was one topic of my doctoral
dissertation, “Brahms, the Bible, and Post-Romanticism” (Harvard, 1994).
Some material from that study reappears in Chapters 2 and 5 of this book.
Other previously published material appears here in Chapter 6, which in-
corporates the essays “The Rise and Fall of Brahms the German” (Journal
of Musicological Research 10 [2001]: 1–24) and “Revisiting the Rumor of
Brahms’s Jewish Decent” (American Brahms Society Newsletter [Autumn
2001]: 5–6). Also, portions of my article “How deutsch a Requiem? Abso-
lute Music, Universality, and the Reception of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Re-
quiem, op. 45,” Nineteenth-Century Music 22 (1998): 3–19, are scattered
throughout.
Any book that takes as long to reach fruition as this one did accrues
numerous debts along the way. On the material side, financial assistance
has come in various forms, including a Music & Letters Award in 1996, a
College of Liberal Arts Summer Research Stipend, and a Vice President’s
Discretionary Grant from the University of New Hampshire in 1999, a sum-
mer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2000, and
a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2001. I
am also grateful to the Handschriftensammlung of the Wiener Stadt- und
Landesbibliothek for permission to reproduce a page from Brahms’s note-
book of biblical excerpts in Chapter 2 and to the Archive of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Vienna for access to many items from Brahms’s library
that are referred to throughout this book.
More important, I have been blessed with many teachers, colleagues,
friends, and family members who have contributed to this project in ways
great and small. Many thanks to the staff at Harvard University Press: to
Peg Fulton, who saw the project through its many fallow and dormant
stages but never failed to be encouraging; to Mary Ellen Geer for her excel-
lent work on production; and to the two outside readers. Thanks also go
to Christopher Gantner, who proofread the musical examples, and to my
friend and fellow chorister Peter Schmidt, who applied his German expertise
and keen editing eye to many passages in German throughout the book.
Among the many teachers to whom I am indebted for shaping my think-
ing and writing skills over my years as a student, I can only single out two:
Mildred Parker, my master’s thesis adviser at Temple University, whose un-
 Preface xi

wavering standards in all things intellectual helped me to raise my own; and

Reinhold Brinkmann, who served as a model dissertation adviser to me at
Harvard University and who has continued to be an inspiration and role
model in my professional life. Among musicologists I have worked with
over the past ten years, I thank Marilyn McCoy, Keith Polk, Mary Rasmus-
sen, Peter Urquhart, and “honorary musicologist” Robert Eschbach at the
University of New Hampshire for support and assistance of various kinds.
Special thanks go to Georgia Cowart, my friend and former colleague at the
University of South Carolina, who encouraged this project at its earliest
stages. Among other friends and colleagues who have helped me throughout
this endeavor, I owe many thanks to Carl Leafstedt, who closely read and
constructively critiqued Chapter 3 and to Rose Mauro, who read the entire
manuscript and made numerous valuable suggestions. I am also grateful for
the warm support I have received from several Brahms scholars, including
Walter Frisch, David Brodbeck, George Bozarth, and Virginia Hancock
(without whose pathbreaking work on Brahms’s choral music my own re-
search would scarcely seem possible). I particularly wish to thank Margaret
Notley, whose work on Brahms and German politics has often directly in-
spired and enlightened my own studies and whose friendship I have valued
over the years. One friend and Brahms scholar who sadly will not see this
book is John Daverio, whose untimely death in 2003 robbed many of us of a
trusted friend and an esteemed colleague. He is sorely missed.
No one has lived through this book with me more than the members of
my family, and to them I am immensely grateful. My parents, to whom this
book is dedicated, provided me early on with an intellectually stimulating
environment. My brother Paul served as a model for devoting one’s life to
music and introduced me to most of the music that I have continued to value
since childhood. Margaret G. McKenna, my mother-in-law, has long been a
beacon of sense and has made the balancing act of life possible for the
Beller-McKennas. My daughter Lydia’s own budding love and talent for
music is a joy to me, and her zest for life is my constant source of energy.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to my wife, Kitty Beller-McKenna, who has
helped me write this book in ways too numerous to count. I never could
have followed through on this and my other professional endeavors without
her love and support and without the love of music that she and I have
shared for nearly two decades.
Brahms and the German Spirit
 C H A
1 P T E R

Introduction: Brahms and the German Spirit

Rediscovering the German Brahms

On 3 April 1898, the first anniversary of Johannes Brahms’s death, the
Johannes Brahms-Denkmal Comité in Wien published an Aufruf (Appeal)
calling for the construction of a Brahms monument in his adopted city.1 Just
as the Viennese authorities had arranged that Brahms be “laid to eternal rest
between Beethoven and Schubert,” so too, the committee argued, should the
city erect a permanent artistic rendering of Brahms as it had for these earlier
composers. In this way, all peoples and all ages might “take account of the
inseparably close solidarity that binds the deceased with his great predeces-
sors and the city of their travels and activities.”2 Linking Brahms with Bee-
thoven and Schubert through Vienna’s reputation as a home to musical
genius is a familiar ploy to readers today. As in his own day, Brahms’s
music-historical identity is still largely defined by his preservation of his ar-
tistic forbears’ accomplishments, especially in the instrumental genres and
in song. Indeed, the committee carefully enumerated these genres (sym-
phony, concerto, songs, etc.) in the third and final paragraph of the Aufruf:
“A Brahms-Monument in Vienna cannot remain a matter that is limited to
the sphere of the city or circumscribed by the borders of the country; it must
be made a general affair of all thankful friends of music.”3 When the com-
mittee broadens its appeal beyond Vienna and Austria to “all thankful
friends of music,” the first pieces mentioned are not the instrumental genres
of Beethoven and Schubert but rather Brahms’s best-known works for cho-
rus and orchestra:
Where the assuaging tones of the German Requiem proclaim their heavenly
message; where the Triumphlied renews the memory of mighty times; where
Songs of Destiny and Fate, the Rhapsody, and Nänie sweeten with angels’
voices the bitter fate of those who suffer and endure; where the four sympho-
2 Brahms and the German Spirit

nies [sound their battle of the spirits]; where concertos, serenades, chamber
music, and solo pieces form the center of an elevated social dialogue; where
hundreds of soulful lieder cause eyes to swim in tears of bliss and longing—
to all those places our call insists on common cause and open hearts and
hands!4

Choral works, especially larger pieces with orchestra, produced a com-

munity-building effect in nineteenth-century Germany—even more directly
than the symphony, to which that function is often assigned by modern
commentators.5 With this in mind, it is hardly surprising to our eyes that
the committee chose to begin its list with Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45,
Brahms’s largest and most successful opus, and one with ostensibly broad
appeal “beyond the sphere of the city” and “the borders of the country.”
What follows, however, might surprise us today. Preceding the
Schicksalslied, Gesang der Parzen, Alto Rhapsody, and Nänie—that is,
Brahms’s well-known single-movement choral pieces—comes the Triumphl-
ied, which “renews the memory of mighty times.” Brahms’s Triumphlied,
op. 55, is a nearly forgotten work today, but during his lifetime it ranked
among his most popular works and was often compared favorably to the
German Requiem.6 He began composing the Triumphlied—a three-move-
ment piece for double chorus, baritone soloist, and orchestra—during the
patriotic fervor of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Like the Requiem
of 1868, op. 55 sets biblical texts. But whereas in the earlier work Brahms
taps the Bible’s philosophical and reflective vein, in the Triumphlied he cele-
brates the establishment of the long-awaited Kaiserreich by drawing his text
from Revelation, the primary apocalyptic book of the Bible, and specifically
from chapter 19, which thanks God for ushering in the “New Kingdom.” It
is no secret why so open a union of nationalistic sentiment with Scripture
lost its appeal in the twentieth century. Such patriotic sentiments already
seemed inappropriate (at best) following the German defeat in the First
World War. After the nightmare of National Socialism in the 1930s and
1940s, giving fresh voice to the aggressively patriotic feelings expressed in
the Triumphlied was out of the question.
The Brahms-Monument Committee, unburdened as they were by that
historical perspective, identified Brahms with his two most overtly German
works. While the Triumphlied announces itself as nationalistic by evoking
the Gewalt of Germany’s political and national ascendance, Ein deutsches
Requiem is less obviously “German” (ironically, given its title). Yet the latter
piece speaks directly to a German audience through its use of Luther’s trans-
lation of the Bible—a core document of German literature. Even the most
conservative and apolitical assessments of the social meaning of op. 45 ex-
plain the “deutsch” in Brahms’s title as a reflection of the work’s German
(rather than Latin) text. This assessment was not lost on the committee; at
 Introduction 3

the end of his century, Brahms’s supporters recognized a centrally German

element in his music, and one that was integrally bound to religious content.
If we no longer hear that connection in Brahms’s music today, it is worth ex-
ploring how and why that understanding of the composer and his art has
mutated over the past hundred years. Approaching such an understanding
will be a main focus of this book.
Our modern concept of Johannes Brahms as a composer owes much to
Arnold Schoenberg’s “Brahms the Progressive.” Schoenberg first delivered
his views on Brahms in a Berlin radio address bearing this title during the
Brahms centennial birthday month of May 1933. In 1947, the fiftieth anni-
versary of Brahms’s death, Schoenberg revised his remarks in a similarly
titled essay.7 Brahms, as we have come to know him through Schoenberg, is
a harbinger of modernism; his flexible phrase structure and supple use of
forward-looking harmony led more strongly to the emancipation of the
dissonance and free prose style of the early twentieth century, according
to Schoenberg, than did the musical style of Brahms’s more ostensibly pro-
gressive contemporary Richard Wagner. Recent observers have noted that
Schoenberg turned to Brahms “as the legitimizing model of history for the
radical innovations of modernism.”8 Thus, he effected an ironic reversal of
the conservative image that had defined Brahms since his own lifetime, and
which had intensified during the three and a half decades after his death.
Since the end of World War II (and hence, since about the time Schoenberg
published his essay), we have been only too happy to embrace this subver-
sion of the accepted wisdom concerning Brahms’s and Wagner’s roles in
nineteenth-century music history. Wagner suffers in the comparison and is
toppled from his position as the progressive musical force of his time. I am
not suggesting that the Brahms-Wagner dichotomy is wrong or misguided.
Indeed, it endures because it still rings true just as it did in the late nine-
teenth century, when both composers were active. Much separates these two
figures, both as men and as composers. Yet much is lost when we view
Brahms as part of a simple duality. First and foremost, we are disinclined to
appreciate the extent to which Brahms’s identity as a German (both to him-
self and to his audience) affected his music, and the degree to which that
German identity was integrally connected to religious issues. I hope to dem-
onstrate throughout this book how Brahms’s music is deeply colored by the
interpenetration of the two, despite the tendency over the past fifty years to
ignore or deny their significance for his artistic output.

Cultural Nationalism and Religion

Linking spirituality and nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany is noth-
ing new of course: although other European nations (England in particular)
4 Brahms and the German Spirit

joined Germany in claiming God-given authority for their existence, schol-

ars have long noted the special quality of a perceived spiritual determinism
that runs throughout the rise of German nationalism after 1815. Koppel S.
Pinson signaled this strain of thought in 1934 (i.e., before the dangers of
National Socialism had manifested themselves fully in the Western psyche)
with his influential Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism.9
More recently, many writers have added to and refined Pinson’s argument,
most notably Liah Greenfeld, pointing out the role played by religion in Ro-
manticism at the turn of the nineteenth century and in the nationalist move-
ment that sprang up in Germany shortly thereafter.
At a glance, Brahms’s output might appear to be a likely vehicle for an ex-
amination of how religion and nationalism were expressed in German music
of the nineteenth century. Brahms was an ardent patriot and a devoted ad-
mirer of Chancellor Bismarck (on both counts this made him typical among
German liberals in the last third of the century). And even if we should
rightly draw a distinction between “patriotism” and “nationalism,” it is not
uncommon for one to lead to or coexist with the other. Brahms also set
more sacred texts than any other composer of his stature during the nine-
teenth century (save Bruckner). Most of these were texts from Luther’s Bi-
ble, indicating his interest in the core document of German Protestantism.
Despite these potential reasons to explore nationalism (or even merely pa-
triotism) and religion in Brahms’s music, neither has received much currency
within Brahms scholarship. Instead, Brahms scholars have focused on as-
pects of his musical style that separate him from, rather than relate him to,
the culture in which he lived. The primary strategy for this critical stance has
been to claim the power of universality for Brahms’s music. Universalistic
assessments of Brahms’s music normally fall within one of two closely re-
lated paradigms: Brahms as a classicist and composer of absolute music ver-
sus the symbolic and programmatic music of Wagner, Liszt, and the New
German School; or Brahms as the historicist, engaging more completely
with music of the past than had any of his predecessors. Each of these para-
digms connects Brahms’s music to issues beyond the time and place of its
origin. Classicism relates Brahms’s music to the instrumental tradition of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, which had already achieved canonical sta-
tus by the second half of the nineteenth century and had developed an atten-
dant ideology of transcendence. Historicism, by contrast, speaks mainly to
Brahms’s sacred choral music and a handful of instrumental works in ar-
chaic genres, providing a means of evaluating pieces that might otherwise
appear regressive against the prevailing musical aesthetics of Brahms’s time.
Both approaches stem from a common impulse—to distance Brahms’s
music from the context of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. They are thus an outgrowth of the Brahms-Wagner dichotomy that has
 Introduction 5

powerfully shaped our conception of western European music history since

the late nineteenth century. In keeping with the need to maintain the strong
opposition between these two figures, Brahms’s music has often been disso-
ciated from the political and philosophical issues of its milieu, in contrast to
Wagner’s music, which is so inextricably bound to them. Wagner himself
had already set the tone for such comparisons between the two composers
in 1862 by remarking of Brahms’s Handel Variations (op. 24) that a good
deal could still be done using the old forms, provided one knew how to use
them. Wagner’s left-handed compliment neatly summarized the polar view
shared by many contemporaries: that Brahms maintained the traditional
forms of the recent past while Wagner pursued the music of the future.
Brahms’s and Wagner’s music provided enough support for that paradigm
to explain its continued persistence into the twenty-first century.
Encouraged by Eduard Hanslick’s idealist aesthetic as well as by Wagner’s
polemics (his later criticisms of Brahms were more openly hostile), this po-
larized late-nineteenth-century judgment of the two composers has left an
indelible impact on the modern view of Brahms. Even Schoenberg’s revi-
sionist essay “Brahms the Progressive” maintains the centrality of the classi-
cal tradition for Brahms’s style. Schoenberg merely turns the tables on Wag-
ner by crediting Brahms with the creation of a new technique, “developing
variation,” out of the classical style, thereby implying a superhistorical role
for Brahms, who connects the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and thus
transcends his own time. This account, widely adopted by music scholars
since the middle of the twentieth century, resonates strongly with the long-
standing focus on Brahms’s instrumental compositions as “absolute” music
whose meaning is self-derived, independent of its time and place. As I will
outline at the end of this book, Schoenberg’s revision, while making no at-
tempt to de-Germanify Brahms, prepared the way for others to effect just
such a critical turn after World War II, and this constitutes a major subtext
for my own approach to the topic of this book; in light of the tragic political
history of Germany in the twentieth century, we prefer to see Brahms as a
representative of the good and noble in German musical art in distinction to
Wagner, whose ideology dovetails too neatly with—and was so eagerly em-
braced along with his music by—the National Socialists. The critical tradi-
tion has found no better way to salvage Brahms the German than to down-
play his Germanness, but in doing so, we risk losing sight of the spirituality
and nationalism that his music conveys.
In the last fifty years we have, I believe, turned the very real classicizing
tendencies in Brahms’s art into a tool for denying a central aspect of his mu-
sic, the interpenetration of spirituality and nationalism, and for driving an
unreal and misguided wedge between Brahms and the nineteenth-century
German world in which he lived and composed: “unreal” because Brahms
6 Brahms and the German Spirit

was very much a product of his milieu, not only in terms of musical style,
but also in terms of the political and social forces that informed his music;
“misguided” because it is a wedge driven from an unfounded fear—the fear
that in acknowledging and examining Brahms’s Germanness, we might see
traces of incipient fascism akin to the glaring signposts we recognize in Wag-
ner’s rhetoric and (for some) in his music.
To be sure, some scholars have worked effectively in recent years to locate
Brahms within the culture of his time, though—for the most part—without
reference to Brahms’s positive identity as a German. Rather, such efforts
have focused on Brahms almost exclusively within the context of Vienna
and largely around the issue of anti-Semitic politics there. Peter Gay had al-
ready paved the way for this approach in his 1978 collection of essays,
Freud, Jews, and Other Germans, where he politicizes German culture of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to deconstruct the
late-twentieth-century apologia of “the apolitical German.” Yet, whereas
Gay focuses on Wilhelmine Germany at many points in that book, he is
largely drawn to fin-de-siécle Vienna—as the presence of Freud in the book’s
title suggests. Wagner’s strongly anti-Jewish polemics directly influenced Vi-
ennese intellectuals in the 1880s and 1890s, at the same time that anti-Se-
mitic politicians were gaining ground in the city. Gay, however, never ad-
dresses the potential importance of those political developments for the
reception of Brahms’s music. Rather, this has been a vital point in Leon
Botstein’s and Margaret Notley’s fine literature on Brahms as a Viennese lib-
eral.10 Through a variety of essays, both scholars have convincingly demon-
strated how Brahms’s conservative musical principles (particularly in the
realm of chamber music) adhered to a politically inclined aesthetic stance
among the cultural elite of Vienna, who sought to maintain the rational, in-
tellectual character of liberalism in the face of growing right-wing conserva-
tism, irrationalism, and anti-Semitism (much of Brahms’s Viennese circle
was Jewish).
Groundbreaking though this work has been, however, it has downplayed
Brahms’s self-identification with northern Germany and has avoided (if not
refuted) the question of how Brahms relates to nineteenth-century German
nationalism. Indeed, surveying Brahms scholarship generally, one finds that
his name has become sequestered from the stigmatized term nationalism.
That separation stems from our negative associations with nationalism as a
movement that has long since served its usefulness in political terms (though
it has hardly left the world stage) and has been widely condemned in lib-
eral political theory for over thirty years. Yet this is to consider only the re-
pugnant extremes to which twentieth-century societies carried nationalistic
thinking. For most of the nineteenth century, nationalism in Europe was in-
tegrally connected to the modern liberal state form of government, as an an-
 Introduction 7

tipode, that is, to dynastic rule. The rise of nation-states such as Germany
and Italy, as well as the political modernization of the governments of Eng-
land and France, stemmed from a new national consciousness that, in the
words of Liah Greenfeld,
locates the source of individual identity within a “people,” which is seen as the
bearer of sovereignty, the central object of loyalty, and the basis of collective
solidarity. The “people” is the mass of a population whose boundaries and na-
ture are defined in various ways, but which is usually perceived as larger than
any concrete community and always as fundamentally homogeneous, and only
superficially divided by the lines of status, class, locality, and in some cases even
ethnicity.11

The variety of ways in which a people’s boundary and nature may be de-
fined has permitted nationalism to take on many forms over the past two
hundred years. (Greenfeld refers to the “conceptually evasive, protean na-
ture of nationalism and the cause of the perennial frustration of its stu-
dents.”)12 Scholars on this subject generally agree, however, that a common
denominator among modern varieties of nationalism has been the sharing
of a distinguishable national culture, a communal bond that demonstrates
itself most clearly for some nations through a common language. This was
most certainly the case for Germany during the nineteenth century.13 The
development of a “High German” literary style allowed the language to
become fixed in a lasting form, thereby historicizing the word and granting
an illusion of antiquity and rootedness in a distant past. Some writers single
out the German experience of language identity as a special case, specifically
because of Germany’s historical political impotence. Adrian Hastings has
pushed this argument most strongly; if his is perhaps an extreme formula-
tion of the thesis, it is nevertheless useful for making clear the importance of
language in German nationalism:
If the idea of Germanness as a continuing reality could hardly be grounded in
political facts—as it could in England or France—or even in terms of a clearly
delimited territory (for the borders of the German-speaking community were
extremely confused and there was much intermingling particularly with Slavs)
then it had little more than language left, language imagined as a legacy of eth-
nic origins. An idea of nation dependent on language seems necessarily to push
the claim back beyond language to an assumed genetic identity, the identity in
this case of the Volk. One’s ethnic identity becomes primary but manifested
through linguistic identity. The German predicament—consciousness of na-
tionhood, absence of a state, strength of German as a literary language—made
the particular form which German nationalism would take almost inevitable,
the nationalism of jus sanguinis, the most dangerous of all nationalism’s forms.
. . . It was certainly the nineteenth century which produced German national-
ism, but it could only do so—one must once more insist—out of the half-sub-
merged reality of a medieval nation.14
8 Brahms and the German Spirit

Given that language is central to this formulation of nationalism, an

important distinction must be drawn between the particularized Germanic
medieval nation, which Hastings rightly sees as the inspiration for German
nationalism, and the generalized Romantic fascination with the medieval
era as an epoch of Christian purity in Europe. For all his infatuation with
mystical Romantic literature, Brahms did not equate spirituality with Ca-
tholicism and never subscribed to the pan-European neo-Catholicism of a
Novalis or an Eichendorf; even when he was inclined to set medievalist
texts by such authors, Brahms shied away from any direct associations with
Catholicism. This raises a critical point for understanding the connection
between spirituality and nationalism in Brahms’s music; Brahms’s sacred
music and spiritually informed secular works are strongly marked by his
German identity and, with early and increasing emphasis, his Protestant up-
bringing. Whereas Brahms was never dogmatic toward religion, he was also
not pantheistic or a universalist in his approach to things spiritual. As I seek
to demonstrate throughout this book, Brahms’s music (especially but not
only sacred) frequently presents a spiritual element that is distinctly in-
formed by his identity as a German Protestant.
Focusing on Brahms’s texted sacred works is merely the most direct and
convenient means by which to understand the impact of cultural national-
ism on his music. Cultural nationalism is a more complicated force, how-
ever, and it would be wrong to assume that we can recognize it only in
works that contain overtly religious and/or nationalistic texts. Brahms’s
very focus on traditional instrumental genres from the Viennese classical
period cannot be separated from the pride Germans felt in that tradition,
as expressed by countless German musicians. Take, for example, Robert
Schumann’s oft-repeated statement from an article on new symphonies of
1839, in which he identifies the Beethoven symphonies as a national trea-
sure comparable to “Italy’s Naples, France’s Revolution, and England’s nav-
igation.”15 To be sure, Schumann made that remark first and foremost as a
musician. Yet the nationalizing impulse in his formulation cannot be easily
dismissed. German-speaking lands were deeply invested in a push toward
national political unity during the first half of the nineteenth century, and
the popularity of instrumental music by German composers of the preceding
century offered an obvious place to begin developing a sense of national
pride. As early as the 1820s in Berlin, the music critic Adolf Berhnhard
Marx had championed the repeated performances of Beethoven’s sympho-
nies as a means of inculcating in German audiences an appreciation for the
philosophical depth of the Austro-German symphonic tradition.16
Both Schumann and Mendelssohn contributed symphonic works with
more or less specific Germanic meaning (Mendelssohn’s Symphony no. 5
[“Reformation”] of 1830, Schumann’s Symphony no. 3 [“Rhenisch”] of
 Introduction 9

1850). But it was not through such programmatic gestures that the spe-
cifically Germanic associations of the entire genre were to lie, but rather
with the perception that the Beethovenian symphonic tradition was philo-
sophically and spiritually elevated in a manner that was peculiarly German.
Thus, when Franz Brendel sought to replace the label Zukunfstmusik to de-
scribe the progressive school of Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner, he arrived at the
equally provocative moniker “Neudeutsche Schule.” In attempting to justify
the inclusion of two non-German composers at the head of this school,
Brendel constructed a lineage from the music of the German past:
[Berlioz and Liszt] would never have become what they are today had they not
from the first drawn nourishment from the German spirit and grown strong
with it. Therefore, too, Germany must of necessity be the true homeland of
their works, and it is in this sense that I suggested the denomination Neo-
German School for the entire post-Beethovenian development. . . . Protestant
church music up to and including Bach and Handel has long been known as the
Old German School. The Italian epoch of the Viennese masters is the period of
Classicism, of the equal supremacy of idealism and realism. Beethoven once
more clasps hands with the specifically Germanic North and inaugurates the
Neo-German School.17

At the historical moment Brendel was uttering his words (during his inaugu-
ral address to the first meeting of the Allgemeine Deutscher Musikverein in
Leipzig on 1–4 June 1859), Brahms was busily backpedaling from his earli-
est attempts to compose a symphony in the Beethovenian (cum Mendels-
sohn cum Schumann) manner, a project he had undertaken as early as 1856.
Instead, he invested his energies in smaller forms of chamber and choral mu-
sic through the 1860s, gradually aspiring to larger choral-orchestral works
by the end of the decade.
Brahms’s orientation toward the political position of the Beethoven sym-
phonic tradition must be taken into account to explain his choice of genres
during the 1860s. By the time Brendel made his famous Neudeutsche formu-
lation, Wagner had long since claimed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and
late string quartets as the springboard for progressive style in German mu-
sic. In such works as Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849) and Oper und
Drama (1851), Wagner united the mystical Romantic tradition (via E. T. A.
Hoffmann, Ludwig Tieck, et al.) of assigning absolute instrumental music
the power to express the verbally inexpressible spirit world with a belief in
the ur-spirit of the German Volk, all in the guise of a super-Christian Ger-
manic religion of the future.18 Whatever the musical issues (e.g., his stated
insecurity about composing in the genre after Beethoven), Brahms’s reluc-
tance or inability to complete his First Symphony between 1856 and 1876
was probably influenced by the historical role of the genre in the cultural na-
tionalism that surrounded musical debates during these very years.
10 Brahms and the German Spirit

We know that Brahms felt strongly about Wagner’s and Brendel’s appro-
priation of the classical Viennese legacy; in 1860 he helped pen a declaration
against the Neudeutscher in which he took issue with Brendel’s claim, as
Brahms and his co-authors saw it, that “generally, especially in North Ger-
many, the argument for or against this so-called Music of the Future has
been fought out and decided in its favor.” On the contrary, the declaration
asserts that “the products of the leaders and students of the so-called ‘New
German’ school, who put these ideas partly into practical application and
partly into the formation and imposition of ever newer and outrageous the-
ories, can only be condemned and deplored as contrary to the innermost es-
sence of music.”19 Through means that have never been made clear, the
manifesto was leaked to the unsympathetic journal Signale der musikalische
Welt and caused Brahms and his three co-signatories more embarrassment
than fame. Brahms’s choice of choral and chamber music, however, did
nothing to sidestep the issue of cultural nationalism. Chamber music, whose
heyday was seen to lie well in the past, remained a bastion of absolute music
and was rarely taken up by the Neudeutscher. By distinction, Brahms’s per-
sistence in this area displayed his eagerness to maintain his identity as a
Schumannianer and thereby secured his position as an opponent of the
“North German music of the future.” The place of choral music in the equa-
tion was just as significant. Although Liszt, Berlioz, and many followers of
Wagner contributed to choral music in the mid-nineteenth century, Brahms’s
deep emersion in contrapuntal rules of the sixteenth through eighteenth cen-
turies set him apart as a traditionalist from the grand and effusive choral
style of the Neudeutscher.
Brahms moved on from a cappella or lightly scored choral works to
larger works for chorus and orchestra during the years 1866–1872—sig-
nificantly, the very years during which Prussia emerged as the leader of the
klein Deutschland solution to national unity. The texts of Brahms’s large
choral works at this time further emphasize his traditional stance, on the
one hand, and his adherence to the heritage of great German literature, on
the other: two are on biblical texts (Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, 1868;
and Triumphlied, op. 55, 1872); two are on texts by Goethe (Rinaldo,
op. 50; and Alt-Rhapsodie, op. 53, both 1869); and one is on a text by
Hölderlin (Schicksalslied, op. 54, 1871).20 These were also the works, as
noted at the outset of this chapter, that fixed Brahms’s place at the forefront
of German music around 1870. The confluence of Germany’s emergence as
a powerful political state, Brahms’s emergence as a major figure, and the
culmination of his early period in large works on great German literature
cannot be overemphasized. Brahms chose to reach out to larger audiences
with masses of assembled performers, singing the words of Luther’s Bible,
Goethe, and Hölderlin at the very moment in German history when a nation
 Introduction 11

was transforming its identity from that of a culture to that of a state. Add to
this the religious underpinnings of German cultural nationalism, and the di-
rect connections between Brahms’s sacred vocal music and German nation-
alism become clear.

The Role of the Volk

Behind claims of a spiritual content in German music is the belief in the
Volk as a source of all German culture—high and low. Recognizing the cen-
trality of the Volk in this formulation is a necessary step toward evaluating
Brahms’s relationship to German nationalism and, furthermore, the place of
religion in that relationship. Again, our modern perception might be blurred
by the distinct brand of völkisch nationalism that emerged from new racist
theories and ideologies during the late nineteenth century and helped form
the philosophical underpinnings of Hitler’s Germany. Scholars of the Third
Reich have traced this strand of nationalism back in many ways to the Piet-
istic and Romantic traditions in German culture.21 To the extent that both
of those earlier movements were reactions against urbane modernisms of
their own ages (the early eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), they es-
tablished the paradigm for attributing to the Volk a spiritual, quasi-Chris-
tian authority. Those qualities fueled a belief in the revival of an idealized
medieval German nation as a God-given inevitability. Although these ideas
persisted through the middle of the century, they were overshadowed at that
time by the more real drive toward a unified German political state, a goal
that appeared attainable for the first time in the 1860s after many false
starts in the previous two decades.
After 1871, during the period Eric Hobsbawm labels the “Transforma-
tion of Nationalism,” the adulation of the Volk that the Romantics had be-
queathed needs to be distinguished from a new, racially tinged form of
völkisch thought that came to drive a more virulent nationalism. The new
nationalism emerged as an expression of nondogmatic spirituality after the
newly founded Kaiserreich (1871) proved too materialistic and democratic
to provide a vehicle of political expression to a mythically conceived people.
In a reaction against the prevailing rationalism and scientific bent of mod-
ernism, völkisch ideology of the Wilhelmine era celebrated the Romantics’
mystical and spiritual image of the Volk, who were idealized as the true
embodiment of the German nation. As a cult of irrationality, völkisch na-
tionalism fit hand in glove with the aesthetic, philosophical, and political
writings of Richard Wagner, which gained ever-increasing currency from
the 1870s to the end of the century. Wagner’s complicity in the new völkisch
program was evident early on through his focus on race as a distinguishing
national characteristic in writings such as “Das Judenthum in der Musik”
12 Brahms and the German Spirit

(1848) and “Was ist Deutsch?” (1865).22 Race, in fact, was the decisive fac-
tor in tipping the scales of nationalism toward its “murderous virulence” (in
Ernest Gellner’s formulation) at the turn of the twentieth century. Gellner
adds: “The community was to be not merely culturally, but also biologically
distinctive: it was not merely to defend and protect its own cultural spe-
cificity; it was to affirm it politically with an aggressiveness which was more
of an end than a means.”23
Brahms, a city dweller all his life, also maintained a romanticized and dis-
tanced ideal of the Volk, yet he represents a distinct brand of nationalistic
interest in folk song as compared to the völkisch movement of the late nine-
teenth century. He is best connected to the Volk through his numerous set-
tings of and his lifelong interest in German folk song, for which he left a
substantial paper trail: he compiled over two hundred pages of folk song
texts, incipits, and tunes (replete with annotations concerning sources and
their locations), and he set no fewer than 106 separate folk songs, many
more than once. Aesthetically, these settings place Brahms artistically apart
from the völkisch nationalists. His music adheres to rational principles of
harmonic and formal organization as opposed to the more experimental
“prose” style of the New German school. Brahms’s published settings main-
tain a clear sense of the melodic style of German folk song, including (when
called for) modal nuance and rhythmic flexibility, all the while maintaining
a relatively staid harmonic idiom. Thus he avoided two musical-stylistic ex-
tremes to which a more aggressively völkisch bent might have led him:
overly simple chordal harmonizations, on the one hand; and, on the other,
the speechlike patterns of Wagner and Liszt that made their claim to the
Volk legacy only in a mystical, spiritual way while making no attempt to ap-
proximate the actual sound of folk song.
Nevertheless, Brahms displays clear elements of nationalism in his ap-
proach to folk song, as I will elucidate presently. Furthermore, if one peruses
the folk texts and melodies that Brahms chose to work with, one finds a pre-
ponderance of religious themes. Brahms likely did not set out to couple
religion and folk song: that relationship had existed historically, as a cur-
sory glance at the interrelationship of Lutheran chorales, German-Catholic
hymns, and German folk songs as far back as the fifteenth century attests.
More immediately, German Romantics had raised both folk culture and
religion of the distant past to iconic status at the turn of the nineteenth
century. Many of Brahms’s early choral works speak to the Romantic ten-
dency to bind veneration of the Volk with religion. Most prominent among
these works are the seven that Brahms set as the Marienlieder, op. 22 (1859–
1861), which he described as “somewhat in the style of old German church
and folk songs.”24 Brahms originally composed them in June or July 1859
 Introduction 13

A
Con moto f
Sop.              
Alto            
   

f
Ge - grü - ßet, ge - grü - ßet Ma - ri - a, du Mut - ter der Gna - den!
        
Ten.   
      
   
      

 
Bass    
f
6 5 3

B Andante con moto

            
Sop.                   
        
pp
Ma - ri - a wollt zur Kir - che gehn, da kam sie an den tie - fen See.

Alto               
   
Ten.            
     
   
p
Ma - ri - a wollt zur Kir - che gehn, da kam sie an den tie fen See.
6 5 3

Example 1.1 Horn fifths motive in Brahms, op. 22: (A) no. 1, “Der englische Gruß”; (B) no. 2,
“Marias Kirchgang.”

for the women’s chorus he conducted in Hamburg during that summer

and the next. As with dozens of folk song settings and a few sacred cho-
ruses, the Marienlieder were partly intended as repertoire for his fledgling
choir.
Musical gestures that symbolize folk song, old church music, or both
abound throughout these strophically set choruses. For example, Brahms
begins the first two numbers in the set (no. 1, “Der englische Gruß,” and no.
2, “Marias Kirchgang”) with a stereotypical high-art evocation of folk style,
the so-called “horn fifths” motive (actually a 6–5–3 progression; see ex. 1.1
A and B). This interval pattern was commonly used in the nineteenth cen-
tury to evoke nostalgic distance and separation (consider the opening of
Beethoven’s “Abschied” Sonata or the end of the piano prelude in Schu-
bert’s “Lindenbaum”). Most commonly that separation involved a pastoral
or village setting, as the horn’s symbolic function is dependent on such lo-
cales: the open road on which the postman blows his horn, the woods in
which the hunter’s horn sounds, or the valleys in which the horn echoes.
Distance takes the form of time in the opening of these two choruses, an
effect that is supported by the equally stereotypical archaisms in each: the
14 Brahms and the German Spirit

10

Sop. 
Alto                          
Der En - gel blies sein Hörn - lein, das laut' sich al - so wohl: Ge - grüßt seist du, Ma -
Ge - grüßt,
    Ge -
p dolce
  
6 5 3 5 6 5 3
Ten.
Bass 
     
p dolce

Ge - grüßt,
p dolce

          

mf

    
15
  

- ri - a, du bist al - ler Gna - den voll!
ge - grüßt seist du,
                    
grüßt, mf


 
Ge - grüßt, seist du, Ma - ri - a! Der En - gel blies sein Hörn - lein, das
mf 6 5 3 5 6 5 3

Example 1.2 Horn fifths motive in Brahms, op. 22, no. 4, “Der Jäger”: bars 9–19.

(mock-) imitative polyphony that begins no. 1, and the jarring open fifths
in no. 2.
Romantic longing, pastoral imagery, and religious symbolism combine
most notably in the fourth chorus of the set, “Der Jäger.” The “hunter” of
the title is none other than the archangel Gabriel with his horn. German and
Swiss art as far back as the thirteenth century depicts Gabriel as the hunter,
and the folk text Brahms sets here is merely a late (i.e., fifteenth-century) lit-
erary offshoot of that iconographic tradition.25 In the middle section (bars
9–33; ex. 1.2) of this A B A, modified strophic song, at the words “The an-
gel blew his little horn, it rang out loud and clear” (bars 9–13), and again
at the parallel phrase “Greetings to you Maria, you fine noble maiden”
(bars 17–21), the familiar horn fifths of nos. 1 and 2 return, thereby recall-
ing the opening words of the set, “Gegrüßet Maria,” that were also set to
horn fifths, while evoking in musical form the verbal mention of Gabriel’s
horn. Verses one through four of this chorus, provided here, are worth
considering, for they serve as a fine example of how intertwined Christian
imagery can become with the Volk, in this case through the medium of the
landscape.26
 Introduction 15

Es wollt’ gut Jäger jagen, A good huntsman went a-hunting,

Wollt’ jagen von Himmelshöhn; hunting from the heights of heaven;
Was begegn’t ihm auf der Heiden? Whom should he meet upon the moor
Maria, die Jungfrau schön. but the beauteous Virgin Mary?
Der Jäger, den ich meine, The huntsman whom I mean
Der ist uns wohl bekannt; is well known to us;
Er jagt mit einem Engel, He hunts with an angel—
Gabriel ist er gennant Gabriel is his name.
Der Engel blies sein Hörnlein, The angel blew his little horn,
Das laut’ sich also wohl, it rang out loud and clear:
Gegrüßt seist du, Maria, “Hail to thee, O Mary,
Du bist aller Gnaden voll! thou art full of grace!
Gegrüßt seist du, Maria! “Greetings to you Maria,
Du edle Jungfrau fein! You fine noble maiden!
Dein Schoß soll hegen und tragen, Thy womb shall cherish and bear
Ein Kindlein zart und klein. an infant small and tender.”

Of course, there were no moors in Judea, and the huntsman is much more
believable as a Germanic figure than a biblical one. Mary and Gabriel have
been localized (or, one might say, “nationalized”) in this folk imagery: a
common device in Christian folk literature (and art) from around the world.
Blending the home culture (in this case northern European) with the Semitic
religious icons of Christian Scripture leaves little room to separate out the
religious from the nationalistic. Essentially, they are one and the same; one
cannot speak of how nineteenth-century Germans idealized the Volk with-
out addressing the religious component therein.
Brahms was especially drawn to the rich vein of German Marian poetry
from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries as evidenced by his seven
settings of such texts for chorus in the Marienlieder, op. 22, as well as by
his “Ave Maria,” op. 12, and “Regina Coeli” (no. 3 of the Geistliche Chöre,
op. 39), both for women’s chorus.27 Mary also serves as the underlying
persona of both the sung and unsung texts in op. 91, no. 2 (to be discussed
at length later on). References to the Christ child and heavenly figures are
not uncommon in lullabies. Brahms himself set other lullabies with these
qualities. Best known among these is the so-called “Brahms Lullaby,” the
Wiegenlied, op. 49, no. 4, of 1868. Whereas most listeners are familiar with
the purely secular folk text of the song’s first verse (“Gute Abend, gut
Nacht, mit Rosen bedacht . . .”) which is drawn from Arnim and Brentano’s
Das Knaben Wunderhorn, fewer know the second verse by Georg Scherer
(printed below), which Brahms added to his original composition in 1874,
six years after its original publication as a one-stanza song:
16 Brahms and the German Spirit

Guten Abend, gut Nacht,

Von Englein bewacht,
[Good evening, good night,
Watched over by angels,]
Die zeigen im Traum
Dir Christkindleins Baum:
Schlaf nun selig und süß,
Schau im Traum ’s Paradies.28

Although these lines were modern, the poet appears to have fashioned
them with the preexisting folk song in mind: hence the matching opening
text and scansion. Scherer expands the passing reference to God near the
end of the original stanza (“Morgen früh, wenn Gott will, / Wirst du wieder
geweckt”), thereby creating a miniature religious scene where angels guard
the sleeping child in the name of the baby Jesus. A similar sentiment is con-
tained in the text of the four-voice setting of the folk song “Ach lieber Herre
Jesu Christ” (see ex. 1.3). Brahms composed this arrangement in 1863 as
one of fourteen Deutsche Volkslieder for the Wiener Singakademie, which
he directed during the 1863–64 season and to whom he dedicated the set.29
Most of the arrangements in the set display the same homorhythmic style
as “Ach lieber Herre Jesu,” yet none display such a rigid half-note chordal
motion as Brahms used here. In fact, there is hardly any sense of tension,
shape, or progression in this piece: it is entirely diatonic and has virtually
no rhythm and little melodic character to speak of. “Ach lieber Herre Jesu”
is a singularly bland composition from the pen of Brahms. By presenting
the original in as unadorned a style as possible, Brahms focuses our atten-
tion on the abstract religious quality of the text, and specifically on a naïve
sentiment appropriate for this paean to the infant Jesus. But the appearance
of purity here is also an evocation of the folk origins of the text. These
two lullabies are only the most blatant illustrations of how deeply the Volk
ethos was imbued with a strong dose of Christian religiosity in Brahms’s
Germany.
In all of the settings I have mentioned, pastoral imagery and religious
symbolism are couched in either a nineteenth-century Romantic sense of
longing or a feigned naïve faith. We may assume, therefore, that the religios-
ity and the Volk-ness of Brahms’s setting are a Romantic affectation. Much
of the Marienlieder, and for that matter much of Brahms’s youthful early sa-
cred settings for chorus (i.e., those before 1864), should be heard in this
way. As with many Germans of his time, Brahms’s fascination with folk
song grew out of the same early-nineteenth-century Romantic idealization
of the past that also led, through other channels, to Wagner’s reactionary
ideology. What separates Brahms from Wagner on this score is the lack of
an overt political agenda in Brahms’s music; Brahms’s interest in folk song
 Introduction 17

In anmutiger Bewegung
p
  
Sop.           
Alto       
 
    

 
Ach, lie - ber Her - re Je - su Christ, weil du ein Kind ge -
p         

         
 
Ten.   

   
Bass 

5
 
          
         
 
 
- we - sen bist, so gib auch die - sem Kin - de - lein dein
  
 



 


  
 
   
    

Example 1.3 Brahms, WoO 34, no. 6, “Ach lieber Herre Jesu Christ”: bars 1–8.

is nationalistic, but it is a cultural brand of nationalism that may or may

not be put to political ends (in Brahms’s hands it was not). But one should
not underestimate the political potential in such music; simply because Brahms
did not consciously intend for his folk song settings to have political mean-
ing, or understand them to have such meaning, did not negate their poten-
tial to be heard that way. And whereas no one would confuse the style of
Brahms’s folk song settings with, say, that of Wagner’s chorus of the peo-
ple in the final act of Die Meistersinger, it is nevertheless difficult to hear
Brahms’s Romantic inclination to celebrate the Volk in a spiritual guise
without being reminded that it was precisely at this moment in German his-
tory that the adulation of the Volk moved perceptibly and undeniably to-
ward the nationalist ideology that gripped Germany in the second quarter of
the twentieth century.
The years leading up to World War II proved that it was possible to inter-
pret Brahms’s engagement with folk song as nationalistic, and many whose
agendas stood to gain from such an interpretation did just that. I reserve a
thorough treatment of that chapter in Brahms reception history until the
end of this book, but it is worth outlining some important points in that
story here. Brahms’s love of folk song was already well documented during
his lifetime, a legacy that led several commentators to seek the roots of
Brahms’s artistic (and mostly instrumental) idiom in folk music. In part,
this gambit was intended to rescue Brahms from the frequently leveled accu-
sation that his music was too academic and elitist—too “modern.” Trac-
ing Brahms’s high-art style back to the Volk helped to unify two separate
18 Brahms and the German Spirit

strands of cultural national pride among Germans: the purity of the Volk
and the supremacy of the Viennese “absolute” music tradition. That pairing
proliferated in Brahms literature during the first few decades of the twenti-
eth century, so much so that it remains an unchallenged truism in much
present-day Brahms scholarship.
A brief example from Wilhelm Furtwängler’s keynote address to the 1933
Brahms centennial festival in Vienna, an essay more rife with nationalis-
tic rhetoric than is usually acknowledged, abundantly illustrates the point.
Brahms, writes Furtwängler, had “the special ability to live out and to feel
the great supra-personal community of the Volk.” And Furtwängler points
specifically to Brahms’s melodic style as evidence thereof: “Brahms . . . had
the ability to write melodies that were unmistakably his, down to the last
detail, and which yet sounded like folk songs. . . . Brahms . . . was the Volk,
was the folk song.”30 In this formulation, Brahms’s affinity with German
folk song is a reflection of his belonging to the German nation. Given the
timing of Furtwängler’s remarks, one cannot separate cultural from political
nationalism in this case. Following World War II, perhaps in response to
prewar essays of this type, writers moved to reinterpret Brahms’s love of
German folk song as a strictly academic endeavor. Werner Morik’s compre-
hensive study Johannes Brahms und sein Verhältnis zum deutschen Volks-
lied (1965) serves as a monument to that trend. Reading through the im-
pressive compilation of well-analyzed data there, one could easily forget
that folk song carried with it strong political connotations only a few dec-
ades earlier, much less that there had been highly politicized literature about
Brahms and folk song during those years.31

A Case in Point: Brahms’s “Geistliches Wiegenlied”

To buttress the preceding argument, I turn now to consider a much admired
but little discussed song by Brahms, the “Geistliches Wiegenlied,” op. 91,
no. 2, one of two songs for alto with viola obbligato that Brahms published
in 1884. In myriad ways, this song raises the various issues I have exposed
thus far: vernacular translations, folk song, absolute music, spirituality, and
cultural nationalism. Brahms sets in play in this song a number of borrowed
elements, and in the interactions among those musical and textual elements
we may observe the influence of religiosity and German cultural history on
his musical style. Pursuing that line of inquiry leads me to the hazy middle
ground between reception and intention, that is, between the perception of a
Germanic element in Brahms’s music, on the one hand, and the direct cul-
tural influences to which Brahms may have been responding in his music, on
the other. This is a gray area, but one that must be traversed before I under-
 Introduction 19

take the primary work of this book: a discussion of religion and nationalism
in Brahms’s music.
Example A.1 in the Appendix includes bars 1–93 of “Geistliches
Wiegenlied.” The song sets Emanuel Geibel’s German translation of Garcia
Lope de Vega’s sixteenth-century cradle scene, in which Mary calls on the
blowing winds and rustling treetops to still themselves for the child Jesus.
Intertwined with this song setting for alto and piano is the most notable fea-
ture of “Geistliches Wiegenlied,” the obbligato viola and the archaic Ger-
man hymn tune it plays, “Josef, lieber Josef mein.” The text of that “altes
Lied” also invokes the Virgin and child in a more homey scene that origi-
nated in late-fifteenth-century church dramas, where the new German text
borrowed the tune but dropped the Latin text of the still older (fourteenth-
century) hymn “Resonet in Laudibus.” Brahms uses this tune to initiate the
song, which proceeds as a large tripartite structure (A B C A B; see fig. 1.1)
in which the viola returns with this melody four times in part or in full. Each
appearance of the old hymn tune in the viola closes one of the song’s A or B
sections, which are marked by ever-increasing levels of dissonance, both
harmonic and rhythmic. Musically, the tune of “Josef, lieber Josef mein”
acts as a mollifying device, constantly stabilizing the song and bringing it
back to its peaceful starting place. Both melodically and rhythmically, the
tune is well suited to this role: the rocking, siciliana-like 6/8 rhythms and
many skips by chord tone are conducive to the lullaby of the text, in which
Mary rocks the infant Jesus to sleep amidst howling winds that rustle the
treetops.
This is most clearly heard at the end of the song’s B section (bars 40–73).
In distinction to the F major opening section A, in which the alto sings
largely in arpeggios, Brahms begins his setting of stanza two in A minor
with the alto emphasizing scalar motion. By the middle of stanza two, the
alto gradually returns to singing arpeggios, and concludes (not coinciden-
tally) with a downward arpeggiation of F major (bars 54–56). How she pro-
gresses from those scalar passages to that F major arpeggio is worth examin-
ing, for it is in that process that the basic dynamic of the song (dissonance
and tension relieved by the melody of “Josef, lieber Josef mein”) manifests
itself. In stanza two, Brahms sets the final word of verses one through seven
to appoggiaturas. Upon its second appearance, on “windes brau-sen” (blus-
ter) in bar 43, the appoggiatura turns particularly dissonant as the B natu-
ral ornamental pitch creates a tritone against the F in the bass of the decep-
tive cadence there (V7 to VI in A minor). Thereafter the downbeats of bars
45 (“Heute”) and 47 (“sausen,” howl) continue to produce tritones, as the
appoggiatura is inverted and embedded within a pair of rising chromatic
lines. None of this chromaticism on the surface deflects the basic harmonic
20 Brahms and the German Spirit

Prelude Postlude
(“Josef, (R) (“Josef,
lieber”) A Refrain B (R) C A (R) B (R) lieber”)

1–12 13–22 23–39 39–57 58–73 74–89 90–99 100–116 117–134 135–145 145–157

Stanza 1 Stanza 2 Stanza 3 Stanza 4

F major A minor- F major F minor/ F major A minor- F major
D-flat
major

Texts
Stanza 1
Die ihr schwebet You who hover
Um diese Palmen About these palms
In Nacht und Wind, In night and wind
Ihr heiligen Engel, You, holy angels
5 Stillet die Wipfel! Silence the treetops!
Es schlummert mein Kind. My child is slumbering.

Stanza 2
Ihr Palmen von Bethlehem You palms of Bethlehem
Im Windesbrausen In the roar of the wind
Wie mögt ihr heute How can you today
10 So zornig sausen! So angrily rustle !
O rauscht nicht also Do not make so much noise
Schweiget, neiget Be quiet, bow yourself down
Euch leis und lind; softly and mildly;
Stillet die Wipfel! Silence the treetops!
15 Es schlummert mein Kind. My child is slumbering.

Figure 1.1 Outline of Brahms’s “Geistliches Wiegenlied,” op. 91, no. 2.

course of this phrase, which, after all, ends up with a half cadence to E7, the
dominant of A minor. But now, at the very moment when Mary implores the
treetops to stop rustling, a sharp musical disjuncture occurs. As the bass re-
introduces the descending thirds motive in octaves on its way back to A in
bars 48–51 (albeit displaced by an octave), the alto line begins to smooth it-
self out: the appoggiatura is returned to its descending direction in bar 50
(where B natural has a much softer effect against the first-inversion A major
chord than it had previously had against F major in bar 43) and is absorbed
back into a straight descending line in bars 52–53. Although the alto line in
these bars melodically resembles the initial subphrase of bars 40–41, the me-
lodic gap between D and B natural in bar 52 signals the return of the famil-
iar descending major-triad arpeggio, now on G. And as the alto sings the words
“leis und lind” in bars 54–56, she returns to the familiar F major descending
arpeggio to begin the bridge back to the refrain, which returns in bar 58.
 Introduction 21

Stanza 3
Der Himmelsknabe The heavenly infant
Duldet Beschwerde; is suffering hardships;
Ach, wie so md er ward Ah, how he has been wearied
Vom Leid der Erde. by the earth’s sorrows
20 Ach, nun im schlaf ihm Ah, now in sleep,
Leise gesänftigt softly soothed ,
Die Qual zerrint. His agony dissolves.
Stillet die Wipfel! Silence the treetops!
Es schlummert mein Kind. My child is slumbering.

Stanza 4
25 Grimmige Kälte Cruel coldness
Sauset hernieder; rushes down
Womit nur deck ich With what now shall I cover
Des Kindleins Glieder! the little child’s limbs!
O, all ihr Engel, O all you angels
30 Die ihr geflügelt Who wander
Wandelt im Wind, winged in the wind;
Stillet die Wipfel! Silence the treetops!
Es schlummert mein Kind. My child is slumbering.

Hymn
Josef, lieber Josef mein Josef, my dearest Josef
Hilf mir wieg’n mein Kindlein fein Help me rock our charming baby
Gott der wird dein Lohner sein God will be the rewarder
Im Himmelreich In the heavenly realm
der Jungfrau Sohn, The Virgin’s son
Maria, Maria Maria, Maria

Figure 1.1 (continued)

During this reemergence of more abstracted material from “Josef, lieber

Josef mein” in the alto line of bars 48–56, the viola had already returned to
motives from the lullaby’s tune, passing through various harmonic stages
(A–G–F) along the way. Only gradually, however, did its own arpeggios and
return figures begin to line up with those in the alto part, finally connecting
at bar 53 when the viola plays D–E–D against the alto’s figure A–G–G. Al-
though this is a seemingly minor surface detail, the gradual rapprochement
between the two performers is, in fact, highly significant, since the eventual
reconciliation between the viola and the alto in these bars epitomizes the
shift from relative instability to stability that has occurred here—all through
the medium of the “altes Lied.”
“Josef, lieber Josef mein” derives its capacity to comfort—at least in
part—from its religious identity; both as a medieval hymn tune and as a lul-
laby to Jesus, the melody of this Germanicized devotional song evokes an
idealized German-Christian cultural history. Brahms prepares us to hear the
22 Brahms and the German Spirit

tune this way from the outset, designating the viola’s opening ritornello
“altes Lied” and thereby calling attention to the tune’s remote historical
identity. For the listener (privy neither to this cue nor to the text of “Josef,
lieber” that is printed beneath the viola’s notes), distance is implied by the
echo-like texture of the accompaniment, which does not enter with the viola
but follows instead at the half phrase (as in bars 2–4 and 5–6). Even within
the piano part itself, the hands echo each other at these points, as the right
hand follows at one metrical unit (a dotted quarter note) with similar figures
to those with which the left began.
Distance here refers to a remote religious era, and the largely diatonic set-
ting Brahms provides for the tune once again suggests the Romantic concep-
tion of spiritual purity in an age of medieval, pan-European Christianity.
But part of the tune’s power to console within “Geistliches Wiegenleid” lies
in its specifically German identity. Not only was the original Catholic hymn
from which the tune derives (“Resonet in Laudibus”) Germanic in its ori-
gins, but also the contrafactum of the hymn into the vernacular marks it as
an actively German piece of cultural capital. Translation in “Geistliches
Wiegenlied” is more than a necessity of genre; it is integral to the hymn text,
the alto’s sung lyric, and the song’s entire Entstehungsgeschichte. On 13
April 1863 Brahms wrote to his soon-to-be married friend Joseph Joachim:
“In good time [Seinerzeit] I will send to you a wonderful old Catholic song
for use at home. You will have recourse to no prettier lullaby.”32 Judging
from the correspondence that followed over the course of the next year,
Brahms apparently was referring to the Renaissance German Christmas
hymn “Josef, lieber Josef mein,” set to the melody of the medieval German
Catholic hymn “Resonet in Laudibus.”33 Brahms had copied both texts
(eleven stanzas of the German) and the corresponding melody out of David
Gregor Corner’s Groß-Catolischem Gesangbuch of 1631 and Karl Severin
Meister’s Katholische Kirchenlied of 1862.34 About a year and a half later
(in the fall of 1864), Brahms sent another version of this old song to the
Joachims. Now the melody constituted a viola obbligato amidst a setting of
Lope de Vega’s sixteenth-century “Cantarcillo de la Virgen,” in an 1852
German translation by Emanuel Geibel titled “Geistliches Wiegenlied.” It is
in this form that the song was published twenty years later (in 1884) as the
second of Brahms’s Zwei Gesänge für eine Altstimme mit Bratsch und Pi-
anoforte, op. 91.
In the texts of “Geistliches Wiegenlied” we encounter a modern-sounding
facade (Geibel’s poem) that is nevertheless informed by an iconically pious
German background (“Josef, lieber”). The Romantic character of the alto’s
text partly results from its translation into German. Geibel, while faithful
to some aspects of his Spanish original—its irregular rhyme, the free meter
and line lengths of the verses, the refrain that ends each stanza—writes in a
 Introduction 23

distinctly modern and Romantic German style. For example, “Nacht und
Wind” and “leis und lind,” two rhyming pairs of archetypal nineteenth-
century German Romantic poetic imagery, are Geibel’s own inspiration;
nothing in Vega’s original calls for these phrases. Likewise, his frequent voc-
ative exclamations (“Ihr heilgen Engel,” “O rauscht nicht also,” “O all ihr
Engel”) do not appear in Vega’s sixteenth-century Spanish original.
In 1864 Brahms had only recently developed a Germanic inclination in
his musical output, as a further consideration of his encounter with “Josef,
lieber Josef mein” illustrates. George Bozarth has demonstrated how Brahms
encountered the familiar German hymn “Josef, lieber Josef mein” upon ar-
riving in Vienna for the first time in 1862.35 As had been his wont since his
late teens in his native Hamburg, Brahms set about scouring Vienna’s librar-
ies shortly after he arrived there. As usual, his penchant was for early music
and folk song, and he was quickly rewarded by his discovery of Corner’s
seventeenth-century songbook in the Nationalbibliothek at Vienna. Brahms
copied all or part of seventy-six melodies and texts from Corner’s book on
two separate double folios, copiously annotating them and listing cross-ref-
erences with Meister’s modern collection (a newly acquired copy of which
he had brought with him from Hamburg). Within two years Brahms had
used five of these folk songs and hymns in his two volumes of Deutsche
Volkslieder set for chorus, published in December 1864. As with many of
the earlier folk song settings that he had composed for choirs he directed in
Detmold and Hamburg, Brahms composed the fourteen German folk song
settings of 1864 for the Vienna Singakademie, which he conducted in the
1863–64 season. And like his earlier settings, the texts of the 1864 settings,
beyond those from the recently discovered Corner collection, were drawn
largely from Andres Kretzschmar and Anton Wilhelm Zuccaglmalgio’s
Duetsche Volkslieder mit Ihren Original-Weisen of 1838–1840.
Note that all of these text sources deal primarily or exclusively with
German songs. Brahms had not always shown such a Teutonic bent. The
two Corner bifolios represent only a small portion of the many manu-
script collections Brahms maintained from his late teens until the last dec-
ade of his life, comprising hundreds of miscellaneous pages that contained
folk songs, early music, canons, and of course the famous “Octaves and
Fifths.”36 Brahms’s earliest efforts to collect folk song concentrated spe-
cifically on non-German (albeit exclusively Nordic) folk song. Indeed, one
such collection, believed by Max Kalbeck (Brahms’s primary biographer) to
have been compiled in the late 1840s before Brahms left Hamburg (in which
case it would be the earliest extant exemplar of this sort), contains fifteen
folk songs from such diverse northern European locales as Ireland, Scot-
land, Denmark, Lapland, Finland, and France—and only one from Ger-
many.37 Brahms’s first securely datable collection of folk songs was com-
24 Brahms and the German Spirit

pleted in June 1854 at Düsseldorf, a group of thirty-seven settings that he

presented to Clara Schumann. Although this collection includes a much
higher proportion of German songs, the set is still relatively pan-European
in its makeup: Swedish, Hungarian, Danish, and Polish songs appear here
as well.38
By the time Brahms copied the texts from the Corner anthology in 1864,
however, a significant shift had taken place concerning his attitude toward
his native culture. One most easily observes this transformation in his ap-
proach to religious texts during the intervening years. Brahms had begun
setting sacred texts in conjunction with an intense study of classic con-
trapuntal techniques that he undertook between 1856 and 1860.39 Initially
he selected traditional Catholic Latin texts (“Ave Maria,” op. 12; Drei
geistliche Chöre, op. 37; Missa Canonica, WoO 17–18) probably reflecting
the main sources he was studying at the time: Palestrina, Hassler, and other
composers from the late sixteenth through early seventeenth centuries. By
the end of the 1850s, however, Brahms preferred to set sacred texts
that were by and large German, including both Catholic and Protestant
hymns, as well as passages from Luther’s Bible (Begräbnisgesang, op. 13;
Marienlieder, op. 22; Psalm 13, op. 27; Zwei Motette, op. 29; Geistliches
Lied, op. 30). After this period, Brahms set no more Latin texts, concentrat-
ing almost exclusively on biblical texts in his sacred music. His emphasis on
German folk songs and “geistliche Lieder” in Corner and other anthologies
during the mid-1860s, therefore, comes as no surprise. Rather, that empha-
sis continues the general gravitation toward specifically German cultural
materials that Brahms was already displaying in his sacred settings of the
late 1850s.
I invoke Brahms’s sacred choral settings of this period specifically to raise
the religious issues that attend Brahms’s approach to folk song. As was true
of many nineteenth-century Germans, his fascination with folk song was
closely related to an idealization of the past. German Romantics cherished
not merely das Volk, but rather the idea of a German cultural past for which
the Volk stood. Associated with that past were many things, including an
idealized Christianity. One reads this initially in much literature from the
early nineteenth century: the novels of Novalis, the stories of Kleist, and
(slightly later) the poetry of Eichendorf—to name but a few prominent rep-
resentatives. Idealized Christianity also infuses the previously mentioned pa-
triotic literature of the period by Arndt, Fichte, and others, where it is
closely linked with a trumpeting of völkisch values. Thus, Brahms’s inclu-
sion of several sacred hymns and quasi-sacred folk songs in these hand-cop-
ied collections is not unusual but rather is part of a broad cultural linkage at
the time between spirituality, the Volk, and German history. The ambiguous
status of many such items—somewhere between Volk and sacred song—il-
 Introduction 25

lustrates how difficult it is to separate the religious element from this venera-
tion of German folk song.

In its overall textual makeup, “Geistliches Wiegenlied” is heavily Germanic,

in both a historical and a modern Romantic sense. One does not hear the
text of the old hymn, of course. But the song begins with a complete state-
ment of its first strain played as an instrumental prelude by the viola. (And
there the performers are privy to its first line of text from “Josef, lieber Josef
mein,” which Brahms directed his publisher to print beneath the viola’s
opening melody, where it is labeled “altes Lied.”) Whether or not Brahms’s
audience recognized the “altes Lied” and conjured up its text for them-
selves, the simplicity of the borrowed melody and Brahms’s transparent pre-
sentation of it convey a volkstümlich purity and grace, which Brahms can
then bring into a dialectic relationship with his more artful melodic setting
of Geibel’s translated poem.
The interaction of these two texts becomes manifest in the melodic duet
of the alto and solo viola. Brahms’s Geibel setting and its companion piece
in op. 91, a setting of Friedrich Rückert’s “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” are the only
two obbligato lieder he composed.40 The talents of the Ehepaar Joachim
likely inspired the duet-like texture of “Geistliches Wiegenlied.” Amalie
Joachim gave up a promising career on the operatic stage when she married
Joseph in 1863 but continued to perform in oratorios and lieder recitals
thereafter. Joseph, of course, maintained an active career as one of Europe’s
leading violin virtuosos throughout the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. If, as is generally believed, the song was composed in 1864 for the birth
of the Joachims’ first child (named Johannes after Brahms, his godfather), it
may have been conceived as a “lullaby” for the new baby, to be jointly per-
formed by the new parents. By the time the op. 91 songs were published in
1884, however, the Joachims’ marriage had long since collapsed. Brahms
sent a copy of the songs to Joseph Joachim, who was finalizing divorce pro-
ceedings against Amalie, from whom he had been estranged since 1880. The
songs were something of a peace offering to Joseph; Brahms had sided with
Amalie two years earlier in a letter, which she later used during the divorce
proceedings, causing a decisive rift between Brahms and his friend of thirty
years. One supposes that Brahms intended to bring about reconciliation be-
tween the Joachims through these songs, perhaps imagining a performance
together (Amalie did perform the songs, but never with Joseph on the viola).
If so, the particular disposition of the alto and viola lines would have en-
hanced the conciliatory effect: in each song the viola leads with a preludial
melody that furnishes the motivic material for the vocal part that follows.
Conciliation, or, more generally, pacification, is a primary characteris-
tic in both songs of op. 91, most notably in the “Geistliches Wiegenlied.”
26 Brahms and the German Spirit

On the surface, constant return of “Joseph lieber” in the viola calms the ever
more dissonant episodes (at least through the middle of the song before the
initial material is recapitulated). But there is also a deeper level at which the
mollifying effect of the “Joseph, lieber” tune is inherent in the very essence
of Brahms’s song. In large part that role for the “alte Lied” is developed
through the subtle interrelationship between the alto’s sung line and the vi-
ola’s obbligato part. The viola states “Josef, lieber Josef mein” as the pre-
lude before the voice enters with material that more loosely develops mo-
tives from the old Christmas song. Some of the motivic connections between
the two parts are relatively blatant, as when the alto begins by inverting the
F major triad and borrowing the neighbor note D, two figures that initiate
“Josef, lieber.” Some less conspicuous elements of the “cantus firmus,”
however, permeate Brahms’s newly composed melody as well. First among
these is the return figure from “Josef lieber” (marked R in example 1 in the
Appendix): C–D–C in the first strain, Bã–C–Bã to begin the second, and in-
verted as G–F–G near the end of the tune. This last form of the return figure
appears prominently in the alto part of Brahms’s song. It is present in an ex-
tended form in the alto’s opening phrase and more notably in the sequence-
forming motive beginning at bar 23. There, Brahms isolates the extended
form of the return figure from the end of “Joseph, lieber” (“der Jungfrau
Sohn”), adding poignancy to Mary’s pleas to the “holy angels” to still the
treetops by adding a modal inflection to the sequence with the minor domi-
nant (C minor) segment in bar 25. And as the first strophe comes to a com-
plete cadence in bar 33, the viola reiterates the initial phrase of the instru-
mental prelude, ending with a prolonged neighbor-note figure (C–D–C) in
bars 37–38 that once again evokes the return figure from the hymn.
Each of these motivic relationships (the F major arpeggio and the return
figure) is fairly audible and apparent. More interesting, however, are the im-
plicit qualities of “Josef, lieber Josef mein” that manifested themselves not
only in Brahms’s newly composed alto part but throughout the accompani-
ment as well. Some of these amount to generalized characteristics. For in-
stance, the alto line immediately presents a chorale-like melodic profile with
its relatively longer note values in a deliberately unfolding arch contour
(bars 13–16).41 Beneath this melody, however, the block chords in the right
hand of the accompaniment suggest separate associations with the bor-
rowed tune. Most readily perceptible is the very character of the accompani-
ment; the barely adorned major and minor chords in the right hand repre-
sent a familiar style in the music of Schumann and Brahms, which Jonathan
Bellman has labeled “chivalric.” Bellman notes that in the Romantic fasci-
nation with the age of chivalry, “two discrete but related themes found voice
. . . : emergent nationalism and nostalgia for a mythical German Golden
Age.”42 Nowadays we might quibble with the historical accuracy of such
 Introduction 27

associations, but to the nineteenth-century Romantic mind, “Josef, lieber

Josef mein” carried the same general sense of a German cultural past that in-
spires the use of a chivalric tone in the alto voice here. Bellman also points to
the use of this musical style in two works of the early 1860s whose texts
have strong medieval and/or knightly connotations: the solo Romanzen on
Tieck’s Magelone, op. 33; and the cantata Rinaldo, op. 50, on Goethe’s
translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.43
Beyond these generalized characteristics, however, some abstract motivic
qualities of “Josef, lieber Josef mein” penetrate deeply into the musical fab-
ric of “Geistliches Wiegenlied.” “Josef, lieber Josef mein” is largely triadic,
beginning as it does by outlining an F major triad four times (with the addi-
tional neighbor note D). Triadic melodies automatically present thirds as
significant motives. With this in mind, the context in which the F major
triad is developed in this melody can be heard as the catalyst for chains of
thirds that develop after the voice enters in bar 13. Right away, as the alto
inverts the F major triad from the viola’s cantus firmus, the keyboard left
hand in bar 13 (maintaining the lilting rhythm of “Josef, lieber”) extends
the descending triad in that melody by arpeggiating in direct succession the
triads I, vi, and IV. When heard as an extension of the motive C–A–F (as
sounded by the left hand against the voice’s entry in bar 13), that root pro-
gression (F–D–Bã) creates a thirds chain, C–A–F–D–Bã.44 The alto then
articulates a series of unfolding thirds (bars 23–26) before launching a
prolonged descent by thirds herself from E to D in bars 27–32, articulated
on the downbeats of a long descending-scale passage over a six-bar domi-
nant pedal. Simultaneously, the right hand of the piano part (doubled in
figuration by the viola) supplies a matching descent that is rich with thirds,
both vertical and horizontal. By this point in the song (the end of the first
stanza), the descending thirds that are implicit in the descending triadic
arpeggiation of “Josef, lieber” have thoroughly saturated Brahms’s setting.
Amid the consonance that this triadic abundance provides, two poignant
chromatic inflections in Brahms’s setting of stanza one stand out. As I have
already mentioned, the melodic E-flat of bar 25 and the supporting C minor
harmony add a tinge of modal inflection to Brahms’s setting. Modality
forms yet another implicit characteristic of the viola’s borrowed tune. Note
that the melody of “Josef, lieber” never lands on the pitch E, and thereby
leaves itself open to a mixolydian modal rather than a major interpreta-
tion. The E-flat in bar 25, then, can be understood as a coloration in the
modern setting that was inspired by the aura of the old Christmas song.
Chromaticism of a completely different stripe occurs in the previous phrase,
at bars 19–20. There, A-flat and D-flat form a dissonant intrusion on what
had been strictly diatonic material (save a secondary dominant in the ac-
companiment at bar 6). Hardly modal, these inflections would appear to be
28 Brahms and the German Spirit

spurred by the previously mentioned Romantic imagery of the text (“Nacht

und Wind”). The distinctly different impetus for these two separate chro-
matic inflections within six bars of each other is critical, for Brahms estab-
lishes a paradigm for the entire song in which modern elements in the poem
and its musical setting are quelled by the reintroduction of characteristic ele-
ments from “Josef, lieber” and, inevitably, by the viola’s ritornello, which
occurs in this instance beginning at bar 34. That is to say, the modern-in-
spired chromaticism of bars 19–20 is softened by the modally, archaically
inspired chromaticism of bar 25.
I have already argued for the pacifying role of the reemergent hymn tune
at the end of the song’s B section, Brahms’s setting of the poem’s second
stanza (bars 39–57). Patterns of tension and release emerge most baldly
in the setting of the third (middle) stanza, where Brahms’s treatment of
Geibel’s poem deviates formally from his approach in the rest of the song.
Brahms separates off the first four verses of the stanza for treatment as a dis-
tinct musical unit (see fig. 1.1) and sets the remaining five verses with the
same music he had used to set stanza one (the penultimate verse, “Stillet die
Wipfel,” is repeated now in place of “Ihr heilgen Engel,” the “extra” verse
that preceded it in the opening stanza). Brahms could hardly have set the
two halves of this stanza more differently. For the verses expressing the
Christ child’s suffering, the 6/8 lilting meter of the previous stanzas shifts
abruptly to a sarabande-like 3/4, while a constant welter of contrary-motion
scale fragments and several chromatically descending lines in the viola perch
perilously above a harmonic fluctuation between the keys of the parallel mi-
nor (F) and its submediant (D-flat). Conversely, Brahms sets the ensuing
verses, in which the child’s torment melts away as he sleeps, to the same ten-
der 6/8 strains he used to set stanza one. In stanza three, then, rather than ef-
fecting a gradual purification through the reintroduction of the viola cantus
firmus, Brahms starkly juxtaposes a stormy setting for Jesus’ sorrows with a
blissful setting for his comforting sleep. Whereas the means may differ, the
effect is the same: a dissonant musical diversion is assuaged by a return to
the cantus firmus–informed material.
When the remainder of the song effects a large-scale recapitulation of bars
1–73, an A B A form is established with the tumultuous beginning of stanza
three (i.e., bars 74–89) at its epicenter. Such recapitulatory forms are fairly
common in Brahms’s song output and frequently reflect dramatic unfoldings
like that of “Geistliches Wiegenlied,” in which the high point of tension in
the lyric lies at its center. (Indeed, “Gestillte Sehnsucht,” the first song in
op. 91, follows just such a trajectory.) Thus, one should apply caution
in reading too much into the ternary form of “Geistliches Wiegenlied.” Nev-
ertheless, it is hard to ignore the profound image at the center of this song.
The Christ child’s hardship of assuming “[das] Leid der Erde” can easily
 Introduction 29

be understood as a prefiguration of his adult crucifixion. Sparing any chias-

tic interpretation of the song’s form, it is no stretch to read religious sig-
nificance in the central (and dissonant) place these culturally loaded poetic
images occupy in the song. It is also Christ child imagery that supplies relief
in the form of the “altes Lied,” which is, after all, a lullaby sung by Mary to
Joseph over the sleeping Jesus.

In a commentary on Brahms’s five lieder, op. 49, Leon Botstein notes that
the lengthy and intensely melancholic and nostalgic last song in the set,
“Abenddämmerung,” on a poem by Brahms’s contemporary Friedrich von
Schack, stands in stark distinction to the gentle and reassuring “Wiegenlied”
which immediately precedes it. He further notes that in op. 48, another song
set published in 1868, Brahms follows a similar ending strategy by preced-
ing a setting of Schack’s “Herbstgefühl” (another essay in gloom) with a set-
ting of the old German Renaissance folk song “Vergangen ist mir Glück und
Heil.” From all this Botstein discerns “a nascent philosophy of history. Con-
temporary texts . . . are juxtaposed to more archaic poetry and folk-like sen-
timents. The contemporary and the modern emerge as the bearer of the pro-
foundly sad, the melancholic, and the pessimistic.”45
In these cases it is “archaic poetry and folk-like sentiments” that set
the present in tragic relief. A similar opposition drives “Geistliches
Wiegenlied.” But there the archaic and the völkisch cannot be separated
from the religious. That which is old and völkisch (and in all of these
instances under discussion, the Volk in question are unambiguously the
German Volk) is imbued with a spiritual aura. “Josef, lieber Josef mein” de-
rives its power to console and heal not merely from the fact that it is old, but
from the innocent religious character of the idealized German past as seen
through nineteenth-century German eyes.
Brahms’s attraction to this melody no doubt stemmed partly from his aes-
thetic predilections, that is, from purely musical considerations. Yet there
was just as likely a measure of cultural sentimentality in his choice of “Josef,
lieber.” This was a German song that Brahms documented in a German
source from a seminal period in German history (the time of the Reforma-
tion). The medieval Catholic origin of the tune (as the Gregorian hymn
“Resonet in Laudibus”) in no way diminishes its Germanic identity for
Brahms and his nineteenth-century audience. In fact, as a cultural transla-
tion, so to speak, the hymn tune is suited in op. 91, no. 2, to Geibel’s literal
translation of Vega’s poem from the original Spanish into German. All is at
once German and sacred in the “Geistliches Wiegenlied,” regardless of its
origins.
Another way to articulate the relationship between old and new material
in op. 91, no. 2, is to identify “Josef, lieber” as a “healing” element. A half
30 Brahms and the German Spirit

century later, the need for healing in the face of modernism was frequently
stressed by reactionary German cultural critics (a theme to which I return
in the final chapter). Sources of healing included various elements from
the German past, the ancient Volk among them. Brahms, composing in
1864, still drew his cultural impressions of the Volk and his veneration of
chorales from Luther’s time from his Romantic predecessors. His employ-
ment of “Josef, lieber” as a healing agent in his “Geistliches Wiegenlied”
therefore bears little if any of the anxiety and pessimism that would mark
the pervasive (and extremist) adulation of the Volk a few decades later.
Rather, it echoes an earlier Romantic milieu in which Brahms’s concept of
Volksthumlichkeit was forged.
Yet it is impossible to draw a distinct boundary between Romantic
Sehnsucht and fin-de-siècle anxiety, between nostalgia and melancholy, be-
tween a healthy historicism and an irrational adulation of a mythical past.
To revisit briefly a main thesis of this chapter and of this book, modern lis-
teners fear such gray areas in the relationship of Brahms’s music to the cul-
ture of his times. Ours is a fear occasioned by a knowledge of where the
modern extremes of those dualities might lead, and how their musical asso-
ciations (Wagner) can raise troubling questions about the social power and
responsibility of music beyond its claims to autonomy. This fear has caused
Brahms’s image to be drawn too narrowly, too far on the politically safe
side. I do not mean to imply that there is a “dangerous” side of Brahms that
we have missed. Rather I would suggest that there is a political complexity
to this composer and his music that is commensurate with the other duali-
ties that scholars normally ascribe to him: musically, as a Romantic “classi-
cist” and as a historically obsessed modernist; personally, as a “solitary al-
truist”; and philosophically, as a pessimistic progressive.46 In the remaining
chapters of this book I explore that complexity in Brahms and consider as
well the impact of religion on political meaning in his music.
 C H A
2 P T E R

Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible

Brahms’s Religious Outlook

In a published reminiscence from 1910, Joseph Suk recalled a conversation
among Brahms, Antonín Dvoéák, Dvoéák’s wife, Anna, and himself in Vi-
enna on March 26, 1896:

Then faith and religion were discussed. Dvoéák, as everybody knows, was full
of sincere, practically childlike faith, whereas Brahms’s views were entirely the
opposite. “I have read too much Schopenhauer, and things appear much differ-
ently to me,” he said. . . . Dvoéák was very reserved on the way back to the ho-
tel. Finally, after a very long time he said: “Such a man, such a soul—and he be-
lieves in nothing, he believes in nothing!”1

Dvoéák’s overreaching assessment aside, Brahms’s faith was, no doubt, far

more complicated than his own.
Pinning down Brahms’s religious orientation is famously difficult. Clara
Simrock, wife of Brahms’s publisher (and friend) Fritz Simrock, recalled that
“Brahms was no churchgoer, yet he was of a deeply religious nature.”2 This
observation reflects Brahms’s private versus his public relationship to reli-
gion. On the one hand, Brahms was raised in a traditional North German
Lutheran household, and his continued interest in religious texts (Luther’s
Bible in particular) suggests that he privately maintained throughout his life
some measure of the Christian outlook on the world with which he was
raised. Even if we take into account a variety of pessimistic and secularizing
comments from his later years, there is nothing to suggest that Brahms ever
betrayed that formative religious training. Brahms was nevertheless a typi-
cal product of the post-Romantic secularization of German culture. By the
end of the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment had eroded the moral au-
thority of the Lutheran Church in Germany, and subsequent generations of
intellectuals—Romantics (many of whom were trained for the church) and
32 Brahms and the German Spirit

others—had turned as strongly against Lutheran dogma as against rational-

ism itself. The upshot of this revolution was twofold. Outside the church it
led to various forms of secular religion, including two manifestations that
bear directly on Brahms’s music: the new quasi-sacred setting of the concert
hall and the ritual celebration of the state. Each of these themes will be
taken up in the course of this book. Within the church, Romanticism had
spurred a dramatic theological transformation, most prominently mani-
fested at the beginning of the century in Schleiermacher’s 1799 address to
“Religion’s Cultured Despisers.” Here Schleiermacher had evoked religious
feeling not only to counter the logical component in idealist philosophy but
also to liberate the believer from traditional Christian dogma. As a result,
Brahms and his German contemporaries inherited a culture in which it was
possible to be “religious” in a broad, nondogmatic sense, without holding
to the particular tenets of Christianity. For German artists and intellectuals,
Lutheranism became as much a cultural tradition as a system of faith.3
Whatever his beliefs in a deity, Brahms strongly identified with this secular-
ized and cultural brand of Lutheranism.
For the Romantics, however, the abandonment of dogma did not mean a
renunciation of religion or, necessarily, of Christianity. Indeed, several schol-
ars have argued convincingly that Romanticism was shaped specifically by a
Judeo-Christian understanding of God and of our relation to God. The end-
less striving toward the unattainable in Romanticism is, in this account, an
expression of Christian doctrine on a mortal’s incapability to reach the di-
vine. All of these ideas may be subsumed under the rubric of striving for the
“Ideal.” Such thinking explains the fascination with medieval Christianity
and even the Catholic conversion of Friedrich Schlegel and other early Ger-
man Romantics, writes Frederick C. Beiser:
If we carefully examine the chief documents regarding the Romantics’ early
flirtation with the Medieval church—Novalis’ Christianity or Europe,
Schlegel’s Fragments, and Wackenroder’s Effusions of an Artloving Monk—
then we find many reasons for their sympathy for it. The Medieval church gave
people a sense of community; it represented the highest spiritual values; it
taught, and to some extent even practiced, an ethic of love, the noblest moral
philosophy; and above all it inspired and gave pride of place to art. . . . The
early Romantics’ sympathy for the Catholic Church was primarily a love for
the medieval ideal, not an approval of still less a conversion to, the actual his-
torical institution.4

As writings such as Novalis’s Christianity or Europe make clear, part of me-

dieval Christianity’s appeal for the Romantics was its universal nature and
its capacity to build a common community among the separate nations of
Europe. One of the more complicated connections between Romanticism
and nationalism as they unfolded in Germany during the nineteenth century
has to do with the way in which the universalizing tendencies of Romanti-
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 33

cism could be channeled into the particularity required of any nationalism.

Germans saw themselves as uniquely poised to lead all of Europe in further-
ing the development of humanity as a modern successor to Greco-Roman
civilization. With regard to religion, the Romantics’ call for a return to an
idealized unity of faith in Europe provided the basis for later rhetoric of a
new German-Christian religion that would supersede the old Catholic and
Protestant divisions.
Perhaps nothing so strongly separates Brahms’s sense of his Germanness
from the radical side of nationalism in the later nineteenth century as does
his sacred vocal music and the manner in which he engages with Luther’s
Bible. Whatever his historicizing tendencies as a musician, Brahms ap-
proached Bible reading, scholarship, and setting as part of a living and con-
tinuous tradition within Lutheranism—not as a throwback but as a natural
outgrowth of his upbringing. Brahms was raised in a fairly conventional
North German Lutheran tradition of faith. As with most Hamburg children
of his day, his schooling included the Lutheran catechism and confirmation,
both of which would have exposed him at an early age to the Bible and tra-
ditional religious thought in a systematic way.5 Brahms also was influenced
heavily by his mother, Christiane Brahms (née Nissen), who came from a
long line of Lutheran pastors and was by all accounts a pious woman. One
sees this in her letters to Johannes, where she frequently admonishes him to
trust in God or to pray, although these comments are usually perfunctory
additions to more substantive, down-to-earth advice on practical matters
both personal and professional. The effects of his mother’s piety may best be
reflected in a notebook of proverbs, Deutsche Sprichwörter, which Brahms
compiled in 1855 while living in Düsseldorf near the Schumann home. Sev-
eral pious religious maxims appear near the beginning of the collection.
Most of the entries do not stem from any known Sprichwörter collections of
the time, suggesting the likelihood that Brahms knew them from an oral tra-
dition (i.e., in the home).6 The first three entries in the Sprichwörter serve to
illustrate:
Wer Gott nicht hält,
Der fällt.
[He who holds not with God / will fall.]
Das Herze ist das allerbest,
Das sich allzeit auf Gott verläßt.
[That heart is the best of all / that always trusts in God.]
Frisch und fröhlich zu seiner Zeit[,]
Fromm und treu in Ewigkeit
[Fresh and cheerful in the present, / pious and faithful in eternity.]7

Hans Christian Stekel, who has compiled the most complete assessment
of the composer’s religious attitudes, observes that a transformation took
34 Brahms and the German Spirit

place in Brahms’s religious thought sometime shortly after he compiled

these proverbs. Stekel attributes that change to Brahms’s new relation-
ships with more cosmopolitan friends outside Hamburg, most notably the
Schumanns and Joseph Joachim. In particular, Brahms had lost his earlier
piety to a “freethinking” approach to religious issues.8 Just what this new
freethinking on Brahms’s part might have entailed is unclear, and here schol-
ars wishing to assess his religious attitudes have been left to rely mostly on
secondary evidence: scattered comments by Brahms in his letters or as re-
called in the reminiscences of his friends, and (more frequently) his musical
settings of sacred texts. The picture that emerges from these sources is one
of a humanistic approach to theological issues that is, again, entirely in
keeping with post-Romantic German intellectualism. As we will encounter
in the next chapter, that perception of Brahms and religion centers on his
largest work, Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45.
Long after Brahms’s encounters with the Schumanns and others had loos-
ened his religious attitudes, some of his comments abandon piety all to-
gether, and this might lead one to believe that his youthful faith had disap-
peared entirely. During the early 1880s Brahms expressed his desire to find
“heathen” texts in the Bible, as in a letter of 14 July 1880 to Elisabet von
Herzogenberg: “I would love to compose some motets or any sort of choral
music (or otherwise compose nothing at all), but try to see if you can find me
some texts. . . . There is nothing heathen enough in the Bible. I’ve bought a
Koran but find nothing in there either.”9 And two years later (8 August
1882) he writes to her: “From all the new works I have only received the
Psalm [Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s setting of Psalm 116, op. 34]. . . . But I
must always expend such an effort to begin a Psalm that has so little heathen
about it as this one.”10 To these comments may be added Brahms’s frequent
reference to the “godless” nature of his biblically based Vier ernste Gesänge,
op. 121 of 1896.11 Those songs, like the earlier biblical motets “Warum ist
das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?” op. 74, no. 1 (1878), and “Ich aber
bin elend,” op. 110, no. 1 (1889), demonstrate Brahms’s increasing use of
sacred texts to probe philosophical issues and to question the very nature of
life and the human condition. In all of these biblical settings, the mention of
Christ is conspicuous by its absence.
In a continuation of the second letter to Elisabet Herzogenberg quoted
above, Brahms wrote, “I have just written such a piece [as Heinrich von
Herzogenberg’s Psalm] that thoroughly suffices so far as the heathen are
concerned, and I think that it has also made my music somewhat better than
usual.”12 Stekel identifies the Brahms composition in question as the Gesang
der Parzen, op. 89, for chorus and orchestra (1883), and points out that “in
his texts Brahms continually dealt with the basic questions of human exis-
tence, with death, fate, and suffering.” A cursory glance at the texts of
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 35

Brahms’s secular choral-orchestral works (Alto Rhapsody, op. 52, 1869;

Schicksalslied, op. 54, 1871; Nänie, op. 82, 1880; and the Gesang der
Parzen) bears this out. Stekel then rightly asserts that Brahms sought out the
same difficult questions in the Bible (especially in works like the Vier ernste
Gesänge and Ein deutsches Requiem) in order to “legitimize” them.13 But
there is also an inherent expression of ambivalence in the act of seeking an-
swers to secular questions (or at least formulations of those questions) in
Judeo-Christian Scripture. Brahms opened his religious horizons upon leav-
ing his boyhood home in Hamburg, and he developed a keen interest in the
scientific and philosophical tenor of the age, but he was never able to leave
behind completely his initial religious upbringing. If he was not satisfied
by the dogma of the church, neither was he content with the answers he
found in the material world or in the secular poetry of German humanists
and Romantics: Goethe (op. 52 and op. 89), Schiller (op. 82), and Hölderlin
(op. 54). Little wonder, then, that in his copy of Jacob Grimm’s Kleinere
Schriften, Brahms underlined the following aphorism: “Science only be-
lieves what it knows, the church only knows what it believes.”14
Another avenue toward assaying Brahms’s religious views, and one that
has only recently begun to be explored, lies in the various “comments” he
made in the form of underlinings and other marginalia in his baptismal
1833 Luther Bible and in two related documents: a handwritten pocket
notebook of biblical passages, and his 1859 eleventh edition of Gottfried
Büchner’s popular Bible concordance.15 Although I discuss the two former
sources more thoroughly later in this chapter, it is initially worth surveying
the broad picture of Brahms’s religious views offered by markings and en-
tries in all three documents. First it must be noted that the mere presence of
these documents partly confirms the standard view of Brahms’s religious at-
titudes; Brahms was more of a religious thinker than a practitioner. Owning
a Bible concordance and copying texts into a notebook show more of an in-
terest in ideas—and, significantly, how those ideas are preserved in literate
form—than in dogmatic adherence to a particular faith or in church atten-
dance. (Although, to be fair, a literate religious bent is inherently part of the
Protestant faith in which Brahms was raised, and thus itself may be inter-
preted as faith-based.)
More so than in his musical settings of sacred texts, Brahms’s biblical
annotations suggest that he was just as likely to find interest in purely theo-
logical issues as in philosophical ones. A list of the entries he marked in
the Büchner Bible concordance illustrates the point (the numbers in paren-
theses refer to the page numbers in Büchner where Brahms made a mar-
ginal annotation or mark): “Apostel” (69), “Bauen” (129), “Christus”
(224, 228–229, 231), “Comödien” (234), “Dreieinigkeit” (267, 268),
“Erde” (332, 335), “Hölle” (595), “Jesus” (621), “Judas” (630), “Jude”
36 Brahms and the German Spirit

(631), “Kohle” (662), “Mose” (746), “Psalm” (799–800), “Taufe” (954),

“Vernünftig, Vernünftiglich” (1048), “Volk” (1064), “Weib” (1083). Stan-
dard religious fare (“Apostle,” “Baptism,” “Christ,” “Jesus,” and “Trin-
ity”) intermingles in this list with potentially more mundane topics (“Come-
dians,” “Earth,” “Coals,” and “Sensible”). Some of the passages he marked
fit well with the image of Brahms seeking out things irreligious within Scrip-
ture. For example, we may not be surprised to find that under the entry
“Erde,” the composer of the Vier ernste Gesänge, underlined: “Through
sin, man is no longer the lord of beasts and nature, in that it brought him to
his Fall; his nature and individuality were thereby divided into countless
types.”16 Removing human beings from their place of preeminence in God’s
creative hierarchy is also the theme of op. 121, no. 1, which begins with the
words of Ecclesiastes 3:18, “For the fate of humans and the fate of animals
is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.”
Nevertheless, one is struck by the preponderance of purely religious and
distinctly Christian concerns evinced by Brahms’s markings. For a composer
whose sacred music displays a noticeable lack of dogma, Brahms’s interest
in the entries “Apostle,” “Christ,” “Trinity,” “Jesus,” and “Baptism” is sur-
prising. He hardly seems to have been seeking any philosophical, much less
“Gottlos,” undertones in these passages. Rather, he appears to have been
genuinely interested in basic questions of the Christian faith as the Bible
could shed light on them. Thus, in Büchner’s entry “Christus,” Brahms’s
two annotations get to the heart of Christ’s theological identity and mean-
ing. First, Brahms brackets and marks the initial entry with a nota bene
(“NB”):

Christus
§1. This is the official name of our savior, and means as much as Messiah, an
anointed one, for in accordance with his human nature he has been anointed
with the Holy Spirit’s oil of gladness in unlimited measure, and has the greatest
royal dignity. Ps. 4:8. Hebrews 1:9. Isaiah 61:1.

Four pages later Brahms draws a marginal line next to all of subsection 4a,
which addresses the most basic theological issue in Christianity: Was Christ
god or man? Not surprisingly, Büchner argues for Christ’s divinity. Brahms
underlines several lines in Büchner’s argument, indicating his keen interest
in the fine points of the debate. And on page 231, under a discussion of
Christ’s birth, Brahms again marks a passage that grapples with Jesus’ hu-
man versus divine nature:

§12. How the eternal birth took place we do not know, Isaiah 45:15. Ps.
139:6. . . . This much is for certain, that the existence [Sein] of the Son was not
something random, but rather something that is essentially founded in God and
therefore eternal. As concerns his human incarnation, or his human birth, this
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 37

occurred through supernatural means so that he could be born pure of all sinful
implications and could enlighten all as the one holy and innocent being of our
race, the second spiritual Adam.

Brahms’s annotations and underlining here do not tell us where he came

down on these questions: such is the tantalizing yet frustrating nature of
such evidence. But it is highly revealing that he was interested in these mat-
ters at all. Whatever the philosophical implications of such musings, the is-
sues addressed here are decidedly theological. Brahms’s interest in them,
however liberal and undogmatic his religious inclinations, shows that part
of his attraction to the Bible was simply a matter of religion. Likewise, for
all of his explicit aversion to dogma and his avoidance of distinctly Chris-
tian themes in his later sacred music, Brahms marked numerous passages in
his 1833 Luther Bible that are utterly unambiguous in their Christian mean-
ing. For example, he marked Hebrews 11, verses 1 (“Now faith is the assur-
ance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”) and 6 (“And
without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near
to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek
him”). To be sure, such unabashed Christian doctrine is overwhelmed by
the numerous passages Brahms marked (including those in the New Testa-
ment) which could be read as philosophical, nondenominational, or down-
right “heathen.” But it would be misleading to suggest that Brahms showed
no penchant for purely Christian sentiments in the Bible.

Brahms and the Bible: Faith and Language

Brahms’s familiarity with the Bible is a commonplace of music history and
was well known among his circle. He himself liked to show off how well he
knew his way around the Heilige Schrift, either by pointing out finer theo-
logical points in his settings of bibilical texts to his friends, or by assuming a
mock-biblical tone in letters.17 His pride and satisfaction over his Bible
knowledge is nowhere more in evidence than in his famous exchange with
Karl Reinthaler in the fall of 1867, when the Bremen conductor was pre-
paring his cathedral choir for the premiere of Ein deutsches Requiem there
the following spring. Brahms answers Reinthaler’s complaint that the Re-
quiem lacks a distinctly Christian core by stating: “I also avoid knowingly
and intentionally passages such as John 3:16. Occasionally, I have taken
much liberty because I am a musician, because I had use for it, because I
couldn’t argue away or erase a ‘henceforth’ from my venerable poets.”18
(This exchange is discussed more thoroughly later in the chapter.) Although
this remark gives evidence of Brahms’s undogmatic religiosity, it also reveals
his pride and satisfaction over his ability to cite chapter and verse when ex-
38 Brahms and the German Spirit

plaining his choice of biblical texts. Brahms makes the point more explicitly
in a letter to Otto Dessoff concerning the “Warum” motet (1877), where he
writes, “I enclose a trifle, for which perhaps—my Bible knowledge is to be
praised. Moreover, it preaches much better than my own words.”19 And in a
letter to Joseph Widmann, himself a former theology student, Brahms asks
whether his friend has noted a subtle irony in the second of the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, op. 109 (1889), where Brahms takes Jesus’ description of
the devil as “ein starker Gewappneter” out of context: “Have you com-
pletely missed the theological, Jesuitical sophistry in no. 2 of the Sprüche?
(Or merely kept silent about it.) I always wanted to ask you earlier whether
something like this is really permissible.”20
These statements are frequently reprinted in the Brahms literature. Ulti-
mately, however, Brahms’s reputation as a Bible reader is based on another
pair of quotes that have been put to great use in making the case for his bib-
lical expertise. One, involving Brahms’s study of the Bible as a youth, is re-
called by Richard Heuberger:

Brahms praised the manner in which young Protestants learn, or learned. He

said: “We learned the Bible by heart, without understanding any of it. Should
a light ignite in one later, then one already has all of the material which then
suddenly comes to life. As a lad I was always fanciful and a daydreamer.
Thank God none of my teachers cared, and I had to learn notwithstanding my
Schwärmerei. Children cannot understand all that they have to learn.”21

This is—to my knowledge—Brahms’s only direct statement about his early

reading of the Bible. Whereas his comments leave little doubt that he read
the Bible as a youth, they do not suggest a lifelong interest in or a serious
study of Scripture. On the contrary, Brahms makes it quite clear that, al-
though he became familiar with the words of the Bible at an early age, he
had no interest in their meaning until later. We must conclude then, that at
some point in Brahms’s adult life a “light” was ignited in him that inspired
his appreciation of the Bible.
A second reported statement by Brahms, as recalled by Rudolf von der
Leyen, begins to explain the nature of that inspiration. In his recollections,
Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund, Leyen writes:

On one occasion we spoke about Robert Schumann, Brahms’s great and most
beloved friend, and specifically about the sad time of his sickness in Endenich.
Brahms told me that Schumann longed for the Bible there, and that this desire
was understood by his doctors to be a new symptom of his mental illness and
was, for the most part, denied. “People just don’t understand,” said Brahms,
“that we North Germans crave the Bible and do not let a day go by without it.
In my study I can pick out [herausgreifen] my Bible even in the dark!”22
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 39

Brahms criticizes the doctors for not recognizing Schumann’s request for
the Bible as a legitimate need. At face value, then, Brahms seems to be
downplaying the seriousness of Schumann’s mental illness, or at least assert-
ing that Schumann’s request had led his physicians to overestimate his con-
dition. Yet Brahms was acutely aware of how badly Schumann’s mind had
deteriorated during his hospitalization at Endenich; Brahms visited him
there in 1856 during the last weeks of Schumann’s life, when the older
composer was barely lucid. Brahms’s comments, therefore, have less to
do with his opinion of Schumann’s mental condition than with his desire
to identify with Schumann as a fellow North German Bible reader. Con-
sequently, Leyen’s story implicates Schumann as a significant figure for
Brahms’s interest in the Bible as an adult. Another, more obscure anecdote
supports that contention, and suggests an even stronger impetus. Arthur M.
Abell, writing in 1931, recalls meeting Brahms near the end of the com-
poser’s life, when he asked Brahms to what he owed his deep interest in
the Bible. Brahms, according to Abell, replied that “it was Schumann who
first aroused my deeper interest in the Holy Writ (Heilige Schrift were his
words). Schumann always was quoting the Bible. Then the death of my
mother gave my studies of the scripture a new impetus.” If Abell’s recollec-
tion is as trustworthy as Leyen’s, Schumann played a significant role in
Brahms’s adult appreciation of the Bible.23
Whereas the remark quoted by Abell is little known or repeated, those
cited by Leyen and Heuberger account for a good deal of Brahms’s reputa-
tion as a Bible expert. Countless later writers repeat one or both of the ker-
nel ideas from each, that is, that Brahms had studied the Bible since child-
hood (Heuberger), and that he could find his Bible in the dark (Leyen). A
typical conflation appears in Walter Niemann’s popular Brahms biography
from 1920, when he refers to Brahms as having “confessed to his friend
Rudolf von der Leyen that like a true North German, he longed for the Bible
every day, never let a day go by without it, and could lay his hand on the Bi-
ble in his study, even in the dark—who from his childhood upwards was a
devoted believer in the Bible.”24 Like most other writers, Niemann retains
Brahms’s reference to “we North Germans” from Leyen, which resonates
strongly with the mention of “young Protestants” in Heuberger. Niemann
thereby elevates the importance of Brahms’s North German Protestant heri-
tage for his reputation as a Bible expert: Brahms—the thinking goes—set
so many biblical texts because he was an avid reader of the Bible, and he
was an avid reader of the Bible because he was a North German. It is true
that his Protestant heritage did play a role in his biblical settings, since, as
Brahms himself points out, memorizing texts from the Bible as a youth pro-
vided the raw materials for his later interest in the Bible. Nevertheless,
40 Brahms and the German Spirit

the catalyst for Brahms’s productivity as a composer of biblical texts was

not his childhood education but Robert Schumann. Omitting Schumann
from the transmission of Leyen’s quotation, as most later writers do, ob-
scures the role that the older composer played in sparking the necessary
light in Brahms after his youthful Schwärmerei.25
Schumann’s influence on Brahms’s biblical interests manifests itself in
Brahms’s first great success as a composer, Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45,
completed in 1868. Despite the date of its completion, twelve years after
Robert Schumann’s death, the influence of the older composer on the Re-
quiem can hardly be overemphasized. Opus 45 is Brahms’s first large work
for “the powerful masses of the choir and orchestra,” for which Schumann
called on him to compose in “Neue Bahnen,” the seminal 1853 essay in
which the older composer presented Brahms to the German music world.26
Schumann also encouraged Brahms’s study of past masters, an endeavor
that is reflected in the various seventeenth- and eighteenth-century com-
positional techniques that permeate this work, such as the a cappella, sus-
pension-laden choral entrances at the beginning of the first movement and
the fugues that end the third and sixth movements. Christopher Reynolds
has even suggested very pointed compositional references to Robert
Schumann in the Requiem, asserting direct motivic links between op. 45 and
works by Schumann such as Das Paradies und die Peri, Symphony no. 1 in
B-flat, and a chorale setting from his Album für die Jugend.27
An even more direct set of relationships are those suggested by John
Daverio between Brahms’s op. 45 and a variety of Requiem-related works
by Schumann: his Requiem, op. 148; the third (“Cathedral”) scene from
Goethe’s Faust; and the Requiem für Mignon.28 While Daverio hears the
influence of these works across a wide range of Brahms’s choral and orches-
tral music (including many specific imprints on op. 45), his most significant
insight on this matter concerns “the consolatory tone that pervades much
of Schumann’s and Brahms’s choral-orchestral writing and that served to
embody” what Daverio labels “the Requiem idea.” Brahms learned from
Schumann not only to read the Bible, but also to use Luther’s text to rise
above narrow religious dogma and express a decidedly modern, humane
view of the weightiest questions, in this case mortality. Daverio points espe-
cially to Schumann’s Requiem für Mignon as a strong model in this regard.
In comparing this piece to Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem, one might be
struck by the distinctly separate musical language employed by the mentor
and the student (Schumann’s choral style sounds much closer to Mendels-
sohn than to Brahms). Yet both works exhibit “not a morose lament for the
dead but rather an exhortation to the living to cease mourning and cultivate
their own innate abilities instead.”29 It is also significant that such a compar-
ison could hold up between works which draw their texts from great secular
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 41

literature (Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister) and from Scripture (Luther’s Bible),

respectively; although Brahms certainly did not discount the religious mean-
ing of the Bible (no matter how carefully he controlled the meaning he ex-
tracted from his chosen passages, as I shall illustrate presently), he neverthe-
less sought out meaning in Luther’s Bible that would resonate with great
German literature. For Brahms the Bible was but one more great work in the
German literary tradition he revered, and could be used to express a highly
individualistic religious attitude. In this way Brahms displays his great cul-
tural debt to Romantic attitudes toward Christianity as transmitted through
Schumann, beyond any musical quotations or stylistic overlaps we may or
may not hear between those two composers’ choral-orchestral music.
The Requiem is in any event a favorite testing ground for determining
where Brahms stood on faith, as it invites diverse interpretations around the
axis of its religious meaning. Whereas its fifteen separate biblical texts carry
many central articles of Christian belief, nowhere is Jesus Christ or his res-
urrection mentioned. Thus, op. 45 is alternately open to a Christian, a more
generally religious, or even a secular interpretation. A typical clash arose in
a pair of articles from 1949, when Robert Hernried and Rudolf Gerber,
working primarily from the texts of the Requiem and Brahms’s own com-
ments about them (to be discussed presently), arrived at separate conclu-
sions about where Brahms stood in relation to Christianity. For Hernried,
“[Brahms] remained his entire life closely bound to the fundamental moral
laws of the New Testament,” and “Brahms’s attitude toward Christianity
was deeply affirmative; it was just secularized.” Gerber, who begins his es-
say by quoting Hernried’s conclusions, challenges Hernried for identifying
Brahms’s beliefs as specifically “Christian,” as opposed to a more general la-
bel like “religious.” Gerber, along with many others, echoed Max Kalbeck,
who had already taken an ecumenical approach to the work in his 1908
biography:
Brahms called his mourning music [Trauermusik] A German Requiem, in dis-
tinction to the Latin death mass for use in the Catholic Church. His Requiem is
not merely German in the sense that it would be a translation or re-texting
[Umdichtung] of the old Latin text, which it does not try to be; it is German ac-
cording to its character, as it expresses through the reflective, scholarly choice
of its texts. One could also say the Requiem is Protestant, if one more broadly
defines Protestantism than the orthodox conceive it, and counts the free study
in the Holy Writ among its primary features. The German fought with his
blood for the right of Bible freedom for the laity, and thereby wrested from the
priestly powers their strongest weapon; the German artist, therefore, requires
only his good Protestant right when he allows himself freely to read and com-
bine texts from the Old and New Testaments, as they seem suitable to his own
purposes. Before him hover human ideas, worthy of a worldly philosophy,
which permits peace and rest not to the dead, but rather to the living. This idea
42 Brahms and the German Spirit

is secular [weltlich], however, not irreligious, it is philosophical, yet it is pious

and beautiful, and it is thoroughly anti-dogmatic.30

Perhaps the key word in Kalbeck’s assessment is the last: “anti-dogmatic.”

Brahms was ever mistrustful of anyone who claimed to hold the key to un-
derstanding any system or doctrine (religious, musical, or otherwise), espe-
cially those who further lorded their supposed superior knowledge over oth-
ers. It was probably this quality in the rhetoric of the New Germans (Liszt
above all) that repelled Brahms relatively early in his career. Throughout his
life he maintained great musical respect for Wagner, and one could make the
argument that, early on, Liszt was an important influence as well. But the
lofty rhetoric of both men rankled Brahms in the same way that any dog-
matic approach to faith earned his enmity.31 As Kalbeck states, Brahms’s ap-
proach to religious texts is deeply rooted in the German Protestant tradition
of personal discovery through Bible reading. It is not irreligious, nor even
un-Christian; it simply allows the ideas of the Christian tradition (in this
case the Bible) to be treated more freely and to be put to one’s own pur-
poses.
As I have indicated, Brahms’s remarks about religion and dogma are
rarely direct and usually leave open a dual interpretation, which probably
reflects ambivalence on his own part. His comments to Carl Reinthaler
about the Requiem provide a classic case in point. Reinthaler had written:
My thought was this: you stand in the work not only on religious but on com-
pletely Christian ground. Already the second movement alludes to the proph-
ecy of the Lord’s return, and in the penultimate [movement] the mystery of the
resurrection of the dead, “and that not all will be put to sleep,” is thoroughly
dealt with. It lacks, however, for the Christian consciousness the point upon
which everything revolves, namely, the redeeming death of the Lord. “Had
Christ not arisen, thus would your faith be in vain,” said Paul in connection
with the passage that you have dealt with. Perhaps at the passage “Death,
where is your sting,” etc., the point could be found, either briefly within the
movement itself before the fugue or through the construction of a new move-
ment. Anyhow, you say in the last movement: “Blessed are the dead, who die in
the Lord from now on”; that can only mean, after Christ has brought his salva-
tion work to completion.32

Brahms responded immediately to Reinthaler’s suggestion: “As concerns the

text, I must admit, I would very happily also omit the ‘German’ and simply
put ‘Human’; I also avoid knowingly and intentionally passages such as
John 3:16. Occasionally, I have taken much liberty because I am a musician,
because I had use for it, because I couldn’t argue away or erase a ‘hence-
forth’ from my venerable poets.”33 With this brief paragraph (the rest of his
response to Reinthaler concerns preparations for the performance), Brahms
disavows two separate possible readings of his work: first, he distances him-
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 43

self from the word “deutsch” in the title of the piece; and second, he denies a
strict theological purpose to the work.
Brahms’s reference to the word “deutsch” in the text is curious: he is re-
sponding to a criticism, or a question, that Reinthaler never lodged. The
conductor’s comments concern neither the title of the work nor the language
of its text but rather its religious nature. Brahms’s comment, therefore,
draws attention to the importance of language in his thinking on the Re-
quiem and may betray his own awareness of, and sensitivity to, the religious
and/or nationalistic implications raised by the word “deutsch” in his title.
For whatever else Brahms may have intended by the unusual title of his
piece, ostensibly at least the word “deutsch” refers to the substitution of the
familiar Latin with the German vernacular. To write a “German” Requiem,
after all, is to supplant a foreign text, a willful replacement of Latin with
German and of Catholic with Lutheran. The German language becomes the
unifying element among the various issues raised in Reinthaler’s letter and in
Brahms’s response. Here Brahms echoes a well-developed impulse among
nineteenth-century Germans to place their language at the center of culture
and, by extension, at the center of what it meant to be German. It was no
coincidence that Brahms displayed this attitude toward language in con-
junction with the biblically based op. 45: Luther’s Bible was often under-
stood as the cornerstone of the modern German language.
If German Romantics saw the Volk as the font of the German language
(see Chapter 1), the ensuing generations saw that language as an object of
veneration and pride. Throughout the nineteenth century, German artists
and intellectuals rallied around their language as a unifying element in the
face of their otherwise politically fractious identity. Language had formed
a central part of German identity for Romantic nationalists in the two gen-
erations before Brahms. Ernst Moritz Arndt made his ideas about the Ger-
man nation and its language widely known during the wars of liberation
from France through his various writings and his widely popular patriotic
songs. The best known among these was his “Gesang des Vaterlands,”
where he spells out the relationship between language and homeland quite
clearly. “Where is the German Fatherland?” each verse begins, before list-
ing various German-speaking regions, only to reject each in turn with the
words, “Oh no! No! No! His Fatherland must be larger.” Finally, in the
sixth and last verse, Arndt answers his question: “Wherever the German
language is heard, Praising God in heaven, there shall it be!”
Although it would be anachronistic to hold Brahms to the nationalistic
view of language expressed in the Napoleonic era, it would be equally un-
reasonable to think that none of that patriotic veneration of the German
language had filtered down to him, especially given his strong attachment
to Luther’s Bible. Brahms owned at least one book by Arndt, Meine
44 Brahms and the German Spirit

Wanderungen und Wandelungen, in which he marked the following passage

concerning the German military victories of 1814: “After a five-hundred-
year-long sad, snore-filled sleep, a morning dream of a resurrected German
nation and kingdom is gradually dawning on the Germans.”34
Arndt’s contemporary Johann Gottlieb Fichte, writing in 1807 from
French-occupied Berlin, largely dedicated the fourth of his Reden an die
deutsche Nation to the importance of language as a defining element of the
German people. Early on in this address, Fichte observes that the Germans
are already distinguished from the “Gauls, Cantabrians, etc.” for having
remained in their ancestral territory. “More important, however,” Fichte
writes, “is the change of language. Here . . . it is not a question of the special
quality of the language retained by one branch or adopted by the other:
on the contrary, the importance lies solely in the fact that in the one case
something native is retained, while in the other case something foreign is
adopted.”35 As a result, according to Fichte, German is a “living” language,
having maintained an innate connection to its roots, while Latinate lan-
guages (especially French) are “dead.” He goes on to develop an argu-
ment that German is better able to represent “supersensuous” ideas, and
concludes:

What an immeasurable influence on the whole human development of a people

the character of its language may have—its language, which accompanies the
individual into the most secret depths of his mind and will and either hinders
him or gives him wings, which unites within his domain the whole mass of men
who speak it into one single and common understanding . . .—how different
the results of this influence may prove to be where the relation is as life to
death, all this in general is easily perceived.36

In order to preserve their national identity, Fichte implores Germans to root

out foreign words, placing him in consort with contemporary German lin-
guistic purists such as Joachim Heinrich Campe and Carl Gustav Jochmann.
Although these authors eschewed directly nationalistic argumentation, their
interest in removing xenologisms from German was fueled by a desire to
make the language more accessible and productive for average users (i.e.,
those outside the literati or intelligentsia) across all social strata.
As the nineteenth century progressed, the people who inhabited these
strata (especially the economically lower, less educated ones) would come to
be identified more and more with the historical German Volk. It is little sur-
prise, then, that the ensuing generation of grammarians who worked in the
aftermath of German Romanticism pursued the history of the German lan-
guage and its role in defining the German people. “Earlier stages of the Ger-
man language,” writes the modern linguist Michael Townson, “were seen to
represent a ‘golden age’ of unity and youthful vigor in which ‘language and
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 45

people were one,’ but which now no longer obtained, and the political mo-
tives behind the study of German-language history were to evoke that spirit
of the Golden Age to remind the Germans of that unity which they now
were lacking.”37 Townson proceeds to focus on the “emancipatory political
activity of Jacob Grimm” and the stamp of Romantic cultural nationalism
that infused the work of Grimm and his brother Wilhelm.
At face value, the work of the Grimms and their successors does not
appear to be politically motivated. And the rational, scientific method
through which they investigate the German language and its history seems
less prone to subjective nationalistic sentiment. Yet the scholarship of the
Grimms and others in their Berlin circle of influence was often openly na-
tionalistic and directly invoked the same mystical adulation for the German
Volk as had their Romantic predecessors. Brahms had entrée into these cir-
cles through his friendship with Joseph Joachim and the latter’s close-knit
associations with the Grimms. Among Jacob Grimm’s students in Berlin was
Wilhelm Scherer, whose History of German Literature was one of the most
widely read surveys on German literature during the late nineteenth cen-
tury.38 Brahms knew Scherer, possibly through the Grimm circle or through
Scherer’s connection to Theodor Billroth and the Vienna-based patriotic
German club Silesia.39
Scherer’s nationalistic rhetoric about the German language implies an ab-
stract bond among the Germans through deutsche Spracheinheit, as in the
following passage from his essay of that name:
The history of our language is, to a certain degree, the history of our people
itself.
Language is the truest reflection of nationhood [Volksthums]. The totality of
all spiritual power enters therein. . . .
But language is more still. It is also an educational power for the life of the
state. It is the primary connection that binds a nation and through which comes
their consciousness of an inner unity. Language serves statisticians as the surest
sign of nationality.40

Elsewhere, Scherer lauds the Bible as the ur-document of German language

and culture. By including the Bible in his Geschichte, Scherer clearly treats it
as literature, yet he is quick to point out its broader cultural applications:
The translation of the Bible is Luther’s greatest literary achievement, and at the
same time the greatest literary event of the sixteenth century, or even of the
whole period from 1348 to 1648. Here the foundations of a common culture
for all ranks of society were laid. Not merely the general outline of biblical con-
tent, with which all Christians had long been familiar, but rather an entire intel-
lectual [geistige] world, the classical products of ancient Hebrew literature, ev-
ery received word of Jesus Christ, the letters of his greatest apostles—all this
was now the common property of all: an inexhaustible source of grand and edi-
46 Brahms and the German Spirit

fying thoughts, a treasure often worshipped to the point of superstition and

abuse, and a noble, imperishable code of language.
Although the Reformation increased the divisions within the German nation,
although it rent asunder Protestant Germany and Catholic Germany, yet, on
the other hand, it softened the contrast between South Germany and North
Germany by definitely imposing on the Low Germans a High German literary
dialect. In this respect, the Reformation also laid the foundation for modern
German literature and for that unity of intellectual life in which we rejoice
today.41

Scherer not only hails Luther’s Bible as “the greatest literary event of the six-
teenth century” but also credits it with unifying the German language and
German literature from that time forward. Later he recasts this assertion in
explicitly religious terms: “Even the Catholics had use at once for Luther’s
Bible, indeed to oppose him. ‘They steal my language from me,’ he said; but
it was a triumph to him to have taught even his enemies how to speak.”42
Scherer’s Geschichte was buttressed by a not so subtle nationalist narra-
tive: Scherer offers the same sort of nationalist veneration to Ulfilas’s fourth-
century translation of the Bible from Greek to Gothic German, which he
calls the “true key to German antiquity,” and whose author he describes as
“our guide into the mysteries of the national prehistory.”43 In Scherer’s rhet-
oric, the religious role of the German Bible cannot be separated from its role
as a national cultural icon.
Scherer also demonstrates the degree to which the Luther-Bibel was a pri-
mary document—a repository of the common language and a generator
of the modern literary tradition. In this sense, the Bible unites Protestant
and Catholic Germany through language. But Protestantism emerges in the
equation as more privileged, as the catalyst for a high, unified German cul-
ture. Ernest Gellner stressed the interconnection of “Protestant-type” reli-
gions and nationalism, and the centrality of language to both. “By translat-
ing scripture into the vernacular,” writes Gellner, “Protestantism elevates
the vernacular into a high culture. . . . Thus Protestantism achieves for its
own religious ends, that transformation of a peasant dialect into a ‘real’ lan-
guage, codified and capable of transmitting messages in a context-free man-
ner over a large anonymous population. That which, later, nationalism
strove to do, and did, for overtly political ends, Protestantism practiced
earlier.”44
Gellner’s theory has obvious ramifications for Brahms’s setting of the very
document that raised the German vernacular to the status of high culture
(all in the name of Protestantism), Luther’s Bible. Indeed, the complete title
of op. 45, Ein deutsches Requiem nach Worten der Heiligen Schrift, without
striking an overtly nationalist pose, celebrates the work’s biblical lineage
and makes clear the importance of the text’s German-Protestant origin.45
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 47

Reading over Brahms’s Shoulder

There is no record of Brahms ever having spoken directly to the role of the
Bible in the history of German culture, yet his intellectual involvement with
the Bible demonstrates his participation in that very cultural tradition. Brahms
owned as many as six Bibles during his adult life. Five of these remained in
his library at his death and were bequeathed to the Gesellschaft der Musik-
freunde according to Kurt Hofmann’s catalog of Brahms’s library (refer-
enced by the “H” numbers here).46 In addition to his baptismal Luther Bible
printed at Hamburg in 1833 (H. 61, of primary interest here), Brahms
owned three separate editions of the New Testament in different languages: a
1545 copy in old German (H. 59), a 1643 French edition (H. 60), and an 1884
Italian edition (H.62). Within the last twelve years of his life he also owned
a 1526 Nuremberg edition of Luther’s translation of the Pentateuch, although
this was not in his Nachlass.47 Presumably, the specific copy of the Bible to
which Brahms frequently referred was the 1833 baptismal Bible. It is a
small-format, unimposing print, exactly the sort of Bible one would make
frequent use of in the home. We may assume that the other Bibles he col-
lected were merely that—collector’s items. Brahms made no annotations in
these Bibles, which suggests that they were not used for close study (Brahms’s
lack of facility in foreign languages is notorious anyway), reserving for that
purpose the 1833 Luther Bible, as indicated by the marginalia in that copy.
Figure 2.1 lists all of the texts that Brahms marked in his 1833 Luther Bi-
ble. His markings cover a wide range of subject matter and prose (or poetic)
style, drawing on twenty-eight separate books of the Bible, including selec-
tions from the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha. Some of the
passages are as short as a single verse; others encompass over a dozen verses
totaling hundreds of words. Some of the books to which Brahms turned
most often are not surprising in light of the biblical texts he chose to set to
music. For example, given the weighty settings of texts from Job and Eccle-
siastes in the motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben?” and the Vier ernste
Gesänge, respectively, one is not surprised to find that Brahms marked
eleven separate passages in Job and six in (the relatively brief) Ecclesiastes.
The frequency with which he marked sections of the Bible, however, does
not necessarily square with what we could glean about Brahms’s biblical in-
terests from his musical settings of biblical texts. His use of the Psalms in
compositions versus his marking of them in the Bible illustrates the point.
Of the thirty-one biblical texts that Brahms set to music between 1859 and
1896, eight (or roughly one quarter) were Psalm texts. Yet of the eighty-six
passages that he marked in his Bible, just nine are from the Psalms, or
roughly one tenth—far fewer than one might anticipate.48
Some of these inconsistencies are better understood in the context of the
48 Brahms and the German Spirit

Bold = Set to music

Underscored = Copied into pocket notebook of biblical texts, A-Wst HIN 55.733

Genesis 39:9
Numbers 6:22–27
Deuteronomy 11:18–19
1 Samuel 14:7–10; 15:2
2 Samuel 7:20; 22:2
1 Kings 8:27–30
1 Chronicles 17:8; 30:20, 21; 2 Chronicles 6:19
Job 3:20–23 (op. 74, no. 1): 25; 6:26; 7:19–21; 12:6; 14:1–2; 14:7–10; 15:3; 17:1;
17:7; 28:25–28; 29:3–6; 29:12–15
Psalm 1; 8; 51 (op. 29, no. 2); 104:24; 115:17–18; 116:3–8; 126:5–6 (op. 45,
mvmt. 1); 139; 145:15–21
Proverbs 4:18–19, 23; 6:6–11; 23:26; 25:11
Ecclesiastes 1:9–10:12–18; 3:18–22; 4:1–4 (op. 121, nos. 2 and 3); 5:12–15/6:4–9;
8:14; 9:1:4
Isaiah 40:2–12; 43:1–2; 43:11; 43:24–25; 44:22; 45:7–8; . 49:26; 55:6–11
Lamentations 1:12; 3:41–42 (op. 74, no. 1)
Wisdom of Solomon 9
Tobit 4:5–6
Ecclesiasticus 32:5–9; 41:1–4 (op. 121, no. 3); 43:31–37; 50:24–26
Matthew 5:3–4:8; 6:19–34; 7:2, 13; 9:5; 10:8–10; 11:28–30; 12:36
John 13:15
Romans 1:19–20; 3:14–15; 6:12
1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 13 (op. 121, no. 4)
2 Corinthians 3:2–3:4–6; 5:1; 5. 17? 10?
Ephesians 3:13
1 Timothy 3:4
Titus 1:12–13
1 Peter 1:24–25 (op. 45, mvmt. 2)
1 John 3:16, 1; 4:16–19
Hebrews 10:26; 11:1:6; 12:11–13
James 1:12; 1:17–22; 2:14–26(?)

Figure 2.1 Passages marked by Brahms in his copy of the Luther Bible.

other biblical sources in Brahms’s Nachlass, especially his pocket notebook

of biblical texts, one of several such notebooks he maintained that are now
owned by the Vienna Land- und Staatsbibliothek. In a few cases, an isolated
marking in his 1833 Bible may seem unimportant but gains in significance
when compared with an entry in the notebook, and vice versa. In particular,
as I demonstrate later in this chapter, the innocuously marked chapter 9 of
Wisdom of Solomon in Brahms’s Luther Bible looms large in the pocket note-
book, where it is the final entry (folios 18v–19r; see fig. 2.2). One quickly ob-
serves that this was a significant text for Brahms: he wrote the chapter out
nearly in its entirety, titled it “Prayer of a King,” and added significant
markings in the margin that might suggest ideas for a musical setting. More-
over, as I illustrate near the end of this chapter, the texts of Brahms’s Vier
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible

Figure 2.2 Weisheit (Wisdom of Solomon) 9: “Gebet eines Königs” as copied by Brahms into his pocket notebook of biblical texts, A-Wst
49

HIN 55.733, folios 18v–19r.

50 Brahms and the German Spirit

ernste Gesänge, op. 121 of 1896, which directly precede Wisdom 9 in the
notebook, may be read in a far different light when their proximity to this and
the passage that precedes them in the notebook (1 Kings 6:11–12) is taken into
account. None of this, however, could be gleaned from the simple blue-pen-
ciled bracket that Brahms placed around the beginning of Wisdom 9 on page
908 of his Luther Bible. All of the available evidence must be considered to-
gether in order to form a clearer picture of how Brahms dealt with the Bible.
Of that evidence, Brahms’s Luther Bible is primary, not only for the marks
he made in it and what these tell us about how he read the Scripture, but
also for the texts’ pre-formative influence on Brahms’s musical settings.
Namely, details of punctuation and layout particular to Brahms’s edition of
the Luther Bible probably directly affected both his choice of texts and the
way in which he set them musically. For example, some of Brahms’s careful
construction of texts in Ein deutsches Requiem may have been suggested
not only by his thorough study of the Bible, or any Bible concordance, but
also by the printed cross-references to the second text in the piece, Psalm
126:5–6, as they appear on page 602 OT, where Brahms marked them with
a blue-penciled stroke in the left margin.49 That verse is presented below
along with the cross-references as they appear in Brahms’s Luther Bible.

Die mit Tränen säen, werden mit Freuden ernten

(Ps. 30.6 Matt 5.4 James 5.7–8)
Sie *gehen hin und weinen, und tragen edlen Samen, und kommen mit
Freuden, und bringen ihre Garben.
(Acts 14.22 *Isaiah 35.10 John 16.20–22)

Four of the six cross-references here were used elsewhere in the Requiem:
Matthew 5:4 begins movement one; James 5:7 and Isaiah 35:10 make up
the middle and end of movement two; and John 16:22 begins movement
five. One could not expect to find the same references in other Bibles of the
day. Each printing of the Luther Bible was (and to a large extent still is)
marked by the individualistic concordances supplied by these sub-posed ref-
erences. My own examination of numerous German printings of Luther’s
Bible from the first half of the nineteenth century (including the 1818 edi-
tion by the same Hamburg firm that published Brahms’s 1833 Luther Bible)
finds none with this group of references for Psalm 126:5–6.
Of the texts to the first two movements of op. 45, only Peter 1:24–25 is
missing from these citations; Brahms similarly marked that passage in his
Bible with a blue stroke in the left margin. Thus, the artful compilation of
biblical passages that makes up the text of op. 45, and for which Brahms is
so often praised, may owe less to his Bible knowledge than we have previ-
ously thought. Instead, he may merely have taken advantage of the refer-
ences presented to him by his own copy of the Bible. Beyond suggesting tex-
tual compilations, the layout and appearance of texts in his Bible may have
 Refrain 1 A Refrain 2 B Refrain 3 A⬘ Refrain 4

Bars: 1–4 4–20, 20–24 25–28 28–43 51–54 54–64, 64–76 77–84
Text: “Warum” verse 20 “Warum” verse 21–22 “Warum” verse 23 “Warum”
Agnus dei fugue New material Agnus dei fugue

Figure 2.3 Formal diagram of “Warum ist das Licht gegeben?” op. 74, no. 1: part 1 (bars 1–84).
Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible
51
52 Brahms and the German Spirit

suggested formal musical organization to Brahms as well. In two cases,

where musical settings exist, we observe from his markings or his Bible’s
own punctuation how Brahms went about breaking down a text in the Bible
with a musical form in mind. The first case concerns the most extensively
marked passage in the entire book, Psalm 51. Although nearly every verse
from 3 to 19 receives some sort of black pencil marking, verses 11–19 are
emphasized by the stroke in the left margin. Brahms apparently uses X’s in
conjunction with two separate lines to divide the text into two parts: verses
11–14 and 15–19. In fact, Brahms set verses 12–14 as the motet op. 29, no.
2, part of which may have been composed as early as 1856 (the finished
work was published in 1864). As far as we know, he never set verses 15–19.
The second case concerns the setting of Job 3:20–23 in the opening section
of the motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben,” op. 74, no. 1. This example in-
volves fewer markings but reflects Brahms’s more detailed musical involve-
ment with the text. To set the text (which is the first of five text passages in
the motet), Brahms adapted the fugal theme of an Agnus Dei he had com-
posed in the late 1850s as part of an unfinished Missa Canonica.50 He trans-
posed the original thorny five-voice F minor fugue from the Agnus Dei into
D minor, reduced the texture to four voices (S A T B), and added the refrain-
like interjections “Warum, Warum?” for op. 74, no. 1. The resulting form in
the first part of the motet is represented in fig. 2.3. As indicated by the letters
A B A′ in the top row of the diagram, after setting Job 20 to the Agnus Dei
figure, Brahms reused that material for Job 23 in bars 54–76 (A′), following
a section of newly composed material (B: bars 28–43) that sets Job 21–22.
In Brahms’s particular edition of the Bible, verses 21–22 are set within pa-
rentheses, separating the two “die” clauses of those verses from the preced-
ing verse 20 and the following verse 23. Brahms bracketed the relevant
verses, Job 3:20–23, in blue pencil:

20 Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen, und das Leben den
betrübten Herzen,
21 (Die des Todes warten, und kommt nicht, und grüben ihn wohl aus dem
Verborgenen;
22 Die sich fast freuen und sind fröhlich, daß sie das Grab bekommen)
23 Und dem Manne, deß Weg verborgen ist, und Gott vor ihm denselben
bedecket?
[20Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,
21Who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than
for hidden treasure; 22And rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they
find the grave? 23Why is light given to one who cannot see the way,
whom God has fenced in?]

Brahms’s setting of these verses directly conforms to the punctuation here

(see ex. 2.1); verses 21 and 22 are set to their own material (ex. 2.1B) in con-
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 53

A
4
f
     
Sop.           
 
Wa - rum ist das Licht ge - ge - ben dem Müh - se - li - gen (?)

B Soprano
28 und kommt nicht,
        
              
 
Alto
Die des To - des war - - ten und kommt nicht,
Tenor
Die des To - des war - ten und kommt nicht,
        
 
        
    
Bass Die des To -
des war - ten und kommt nicht,

C
52 pp
Sop.   
Ten.        
    
      
  
Und dem Mann - ne, das Weg ver bor - gen ist,

Example 2.1 Melodic themes from “Warum ist das Licht gegeben?” op. 74, no. 1: part 1 (bars
1–84): (A) corresponds to section A in fig. 2.3: bars 1–3; (B) corresponds to section B in fig. 2.3:
bars 28–33; (C) corresponds to section C in fig. 2.3: bars 52–56.

trast to the surrounding verses 20 and 23, which were set to the Agnus Dei
fugue and its variation (ex. 2.1A and C). Already, then, the punctuation of a
text within his 1833 Bible may have prompted Brahms’s formal approach to
a musical setting of that text.
Brahms marked verse 25 of Job 3 separately with a semicircular bracket
in the right margin on page 509. Although he did not set this verse to music,
he did include it in his notebook of biblical passages. Indeed, the “Warum?”
motet marks a good place to begin an examination of that source, since the
first two passages copied into it (James 5:11 and Lamentations 3:41) form
the middle texts of that motet.51 The biblical notebook was but one in a se-
ries of pocket notebooks that Brahms maintained throughout his life, and in
which he wrote out texts he found suitable to musical setting, crossing out
texts after he had set them.52 Of the four notebooks that have survived, the
three others are devoted to poetic texts, including those for all but twenty-
six of the songs that he composed after 1877 (as well as for a few earlier
songs), whereas the biblical notebook includes the texts to all of Brahms’s
biblical settings from 1877 on. In all four notebooks, Brahms cited the
54 Brahms and the German Spirit

FOLIO 13r
James 5:11 (op. 74, no. 1)
Lamentations 3:41 (op. 74, no. 1)
Psalm 69:30
Exodus 34:6–7
Hebrews 4:12

FOLIO 13v FOLIO 14r

Hebrews 4:16 Proverbs 23:26
Psalm 22:5–6 (op. 109, no.1 ) Luke 11:21, 17 (op. 109, no. 2)
Psalm 29:11 (op. 109, no.1 ) Deuteronomy 4:7, 9 (op. 109, no. 3)
Proverbs 4:18–19, 23

FOLIO 14v FOLIO 15r

Genesis 28:16–17, 22 Job 3:25
Wisdom 2:4 Job 17:7
Jeremiah 8:20 Isaiah 12:1–2
Psalm 35:14 Psalm 27:1
2 Corinthians 7:4 Psalm 37:5
Psalm 119:82
Job 21:34
Ephesians 3:20–21

FOLIO 15v FOLIO 16r

1 Kings 6:11–12 Ecclesiastes 3:18–22 (op. 121, no. 1; vv. 19–22)
Ecclesiasticus 41:1–4 (op. 121, no. 3)

FOLIO 16v FOLIO 17r

Ecclesiastes 4:1–4 (op. 121, no. 2) [Blank]

FOLIO 17v–FOLIO 18r

1 Corinthians 13 (op. 121, no. 4)

Folio 18v–FOLIO 19r

Wisdom 9:1–12

Figure 2.4 Copies in Brahms’s pocket notebook of biblical texts, A-Wst HIN 55.733.

source of the text and crossed out nearly all of those that he had set to mu-
sic. In biblical as well as poetic texts, he occasionally made marginal dia-
grams (braces and other types of vertical strokes) for himself, apparently to
help organize his own thoughts about possible musical settings. The note-
book, which measures 16.5 by 19.8 cm, originally contained twenty-four
pages, the first twelve and last two of which have been torn out.53 Brahms
copied thirty-two passages from twenty-six books of the Bible onto twelve
pages of this notebook (folios 13r–19r; fig. 2.4), leaving folios 17r and 19v
through 22v blank. These texts relate to a chronologically contiguous group
of Brahms’s compositions between 1877 and 1896: op. 74, no. 1; op. 109;
op. 110, no. 1; and op. 121. A noticeable visual distinction occurs between
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 55

the texts copied on folios 13r–15r and those on the remaining pages of the
notebook; the former, relatively short passages are written in pencil, several
to a page; the latter tend to be lengthier, one or two to a page, and are writ-
ten in ink.
The dates of the compositions in question suggest that he copied these
biblical texts into the notebook relatively late. Still, the date of this source
and its relationship to Brahms’s markings in his Luther Bible is murky. Al-
though the first two texts in the notebook (James 5:11 and Lamentations
3:41) relate to the remaining biblical passages in Brahms’s “Warum” motet
of 1877, the opening text of that piece, Job 3:20–23, is not found here.54
It may have been copied on the preceding torn-out page, but it is also
likely that the chronological connection between Brahms’s biblical composi-
tions, the marks he made in his Luther Bible, and his copying of texts
into the notebook is far more complicated and unrecoverable from this evi-
dence.
In any case, our reading of the evidence supplied by the notebook is un-
avoidably complicated by our knowledge of which texts Brahms grouped
together in actual musical settings. The first remaining page in the note-
book, folio 13r—which includes James 5:11, Lamentations 3:41, Psalm
69:30, Exodus 34:6–7, and Hebrews 4:12—provides a good example of
how a group of texts familiar to us from an eventual musical setting (op. 74,
no. 1, and op. 110, no. 1) may be understood to carry a quite different
meaning when viewed in their context within the notebook. Absent our
awareness of how the first two texts on this page were utilized in the
“Warum” motet, we might be inclined to see a connection between the first
and fourth texts on the page, James 5:11 and Exodus 34:6–7, through the
“barmherzig” motive:

folio 13r
James 5:11 denn der Herr ist barmherzig und ein Erbarmer.
[The Lord is compassionate and merciful.]
Exodus 34:6, 7 Herr, Herr Gott barmherzig und gnädig
[The Lord, the Lord, / a God merciful and gracious]

Similarly, we might link the Exodus passage with that which follows it on
the page, Hebrews 4:12, for their common “und . . . und . . . und” construc-
tion and their depiction of God as a judge:

folio 13r
Exodus 34:6–7 Herr, Herr Gott, barmherzig, und gnädig, und geduldig,
und von großer Gnade und Treue. Der du beweisest
Gnade in tausend Glied, und vergibst Missetat, Übertretung
und Sünde, und vor welchem niemand unschuldig ist.
56 Brahms and the German Spirit

[The Lord, the Lord, / a God merciful and gracious, / slow

to anger, / and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
/ keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, /
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, / yet by no
means clearing the guilty.]
folio 13r
Hebrews 4:12 [Denn] das Wort Gottes ist lebendig und kräftig, und
chärfer denn kein zweischneidiges Schwert, und
durchdringt, bis daß es scheidet Seele und Geist, auch
Mark und Bein, und ist ein Richter der Gedanken und
Sinne des Herzens.
[Indeed the word of God is living and active, sharper than
any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from
spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts
and intentions of the heart.]

Finally, if we turn the page to the first text on folio 13v, Hebrews 4:16,55 we
find a text that relates to several of those on 13r, and could serve as a cho-
rale-like summation of the ideas expressed in them:

folio 13v (from folio 13r)

Hebrews 4.16 (Lamentations 3:41)
[Darum] Lasset uns hinzu treten mit Lasset uns unser Herz . . .
Freudigkeit zu dem Gnadenstuhl, (James 5:11)
auf daß wir Barmherzigkeit Der Herr ist barmherzig
empfangen, wenn uns (Psalm 69:30)
Hülfe not sein wird. Gott deine Hülfe schütze mich

These texts, therefore, are apparently linked not only by their physical prox-
imity in the biblical notebook but also by their content, which indicates that
Brahms copied biblical verses as thematically linked groups into this source.
If, however, we approach folio 13r with an awareness of how he actually
used these texts, we arrive at very a different interpretation of their relation-
ship to one another. For example, as previously mentioned, the first two
texts on the page, James 5:11 and Lamentations 3:41, were used—in reverse
order—as the second and third sections of the “Warum” motet, while the
next two texts (Psalm 69:30 and Exodus 34:6–7) were combined to form
the text of the motet op. 110, no. 1. Thus, it is possible to reach a very
different conclusion about the proximity of the first pair of texts on 13r vis-
à-vis the second pair; that is, that their appearance on the same page is
entirely coincidental, or that their relationships indicate they belong to a
pool of verses from which Brahms later chose freely in constructing texts for
his motets.
Several openings in the notebook contain similar text groups to those
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 57

on 13r and 13v (sometimes also appearing to run over to the top of the
next page as they do there). Generally, Brahms chooses passages that ei-
ther in and of themselves or in juxtaposition to one another form binary
oppositions. Occasionally he chose verses from a part of the Bible where
such oppositions are to be expected (Psalms, parables). But more often he
created them himself through his choice and ordering of particular biblical
passages. Several such groups occur at the opening of folios 14v–15r. There
Brahms entered a number of “negative-positive” groups in which one or
more brief passages that express a pessimistic or plaintive thought are fol-
lowed by one or more uplifting verses. So, for example, a set of texts on fo-
lio 14v that expresses a nostalgic sense of sorrow, characterized by words
such as dahin and vergangen (Wisdom of Solomon 2:4, Jeremiah 8:20,
Psalm 35:14) is followed by several texts that express the possibility of com-
fort; indeed, all three contain some form of the word Trost (2 Corinthians
7:4, Psalm 119:82, Job 21:34).56 Similar pairings of pessimistic texts with
the promise of comfort are found throughout Ein deutsches Requiem, as I
will discuss in the next chapter. That Brahms was copying such texts into his
notebook (presumably) in the 1870s or later—that is, long after the Re-
quiem had been composed—suggests that he specifically sought out such
patterns of binary opposition in the Bible, beyond their normal occurrence
in the Psalms or other particular, more specific sections of Scripture.57

Solomon’s House and a King’s Prayer

Another type of binary opposition informs the texts on the previous open-
ing (folios 13v–14r), but here we begin to encounter issues that may reso-
nate beyond musical considerations to touch on political and other cultural
themes. Except for the first passage on folio 13v (Hebrews 4:16), folios 13v–
14r contain the four texts that make up the Fest- und Gedenksprüche,
op. 109 (1888–89), in their composed order, along with three passages from
Proverbs (not shown here) that appear between the texts to op. 109, nos.
1 and 2:

folios 13v–14r
Psalm 22:5–6 op. 109, no. 1
In you our fathers put their trust; / they trusted
and you delivered them. 6They cried to you and
were saved; / in you they trusted and were not
disappointed.
Psalm 29:11 op. 109, no. 1
The Lord gives strength to His people; / the Lord
blesses His people with peace.
58 Brahms and the German Spirit

Luke 11:21, 17 op. 109, no. 2

21When a strong man, fully armed, guards his
own house, his possessions are safe. 17Any
kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and
a house divided against itself will fall. 18If Satan
is divided against himself, how can his kingdom
stand?
Deuteronomy 4:7, 9 op. 109, no. 3
What other nation is so great as to have their gods
near them the way the Lord our God is near us
whenever we pray to Him? / 9Only be careful, and
watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget
the things your eyes have seen or let them slip
from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to
your children and to their children after them.

The patriotic bent of the eventual op. 109 texts, their most commonly dis-
cussed and widely acknowledged characteristic, manifests itself in two main
categories within the Fest- und Gedenksprüche: the Lord’s historical rela-
tionship with His Volk (made explicit in nos. 1 and 3), and the unity of a
“house” as symbol for a nation (in no. 2). If one extends the group on 13v–
14r to include the first text at the top of the following page, folio 14v, the
references to “Gotteshaus” in a series of verses from Genesis 28 reinforce
the words “Palast” and “Haus” from Luke 11:21, 17 (op. 109, no. 2) on fo-
lio 14r. The passage from Genesis is of the “locus iste” variety, as each line
relates God to a place in a form of praise:

Genesis 28:16–17 Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!
How awesome is this place! This is none other than
the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall
be God’s house.

Again, in order to appreciate the potential meanings and connections

presented by this compilation, we must suspend our knowledge of how
Brahms ultimately used some of the texts here (i.e., for op. 109). And once
more, the suggestion of a theme in the notebook becomes less opaque when
considered against similar evidence presented by Brahms’s marking in his
Bible. His predilection for biblical passages that contain spatial metaphors
for God’s kingdom led him to mark the following passages there, all of
which compliment the “house” imagery on folios 13v–14v of the note-
book.58
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 59

Exodus 39:9 He is not greater in this house than I am; nor has
he kept back anything from me except yourself,
because you are his wife.
Deuteronomy 11:19 And you shall teach them to your children, talking
of them when you are sitting in your house, and
when you are walking by the way, and when you lie
down, and when you rise.
1 Kings 8:27–30 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold,
heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee;
how much less this house which I have built! /
28Yet have regard to the prayer of thy servant and
to his supplication, O Lord my God, hearkening to
the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prays
before thee this day; / 29that thy eyes may be open
night and day toward this house, the place of which
thou hast said, “My name shall be there,” that thou
mayest hearken to the prayer which thy servant
offers toward this place. / 30And hearken thou to
the supplication of thy servant and of thy people
Israel, when they pray toward this place; yea, hear
thou in heaven thy dwelling place; and when thou
hearest, forgive.”
2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is
destroyed, we have a building from God, a
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Wisdom 9:7–8 You have chosen me to be king of your people and
to be judge over your sons and daughters. / 8You
have given command to build a temple on your
holy mountain, and an altar in the city of your
habitation, a copy of the holy tent that you
prepared from the beginning.
1 Corinthians 3:16–17 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and
that God’s Spirit dwells in you? / 17If any one
destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For
God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.

Among the New Testament texts here, the metaphor of a house or temple
runs along predictable Judeo-Christian theological lines, as in the equation
of the individual as a vessel for God’s spirit in 1 Corinthians 3:16 or of the
earth as a mortal representation of heaven in 2 Corinthians 5:1 (“For we
know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from
God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”).59
Some of the passages that Brahms marked in the Old Testament and
Apocrypha, however, use spatial metaphors more imaginatively, namely,
the related passages from 1 Kings 8 and Wisdom of Solomon 9. As books,
60 Brahms and the German Spirit

Kings and Wisdom are integrally related: 1 Kings is a discussion of Solo-

mon’s reign over Israel, and its early chapters focus on God’s gift of wisdom,
as in 1 Kings 4:29: “God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment,
and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore.” Those
words speak directly to verse 4 of Wisdom 9, “Give me the wisdom that sits
by your throne,” the central theme of that chapter, which Brahms labels
“Gebet eines Königs” in his notebook. Both 1 Kings 8:27–30 and Wisdom
of Solomon 9 are spoken by Solomon, and relate to the same two struc-
tures—the temple in Jerusalem and Solomon’s own house in the forests of
Lebanon—and in each Solomon addresses God on behalf of the Israelites. In
the passage from 1 Kings 8, Solomon stands between the newly finished
temple and an assembly of all the leaders of Israel whom he had summoned.
After blessing the assembled, Solomon lifts his hands to heaven and prays to
God. Brahms’s pencil mark in his Bible begins at verse 27, the very point at
which Solomon acknowledges that the temple is merely a conduit to God,
not His dwelling place (“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold,
heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this
house which I have built!”). It is thus not the individual who prays to the
temple in hope of forgiveness but rather the entire nation of Israel (“And
hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant and of thy people Israel,
when they pray toward this place; yea, hear thou in heaven thy dwelling
place; and when thou hearest, forgive”).
None of these passages draws a direct relationship among the temple, the
individual, and the nation, but we may infer how Brahms connected these
entities from his selection of passages. Clearly the temple and the individual
may be equated as vessels of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament passages
here. But just as a single person forms a particularized and human version of
the temple, so too does the individual represent in singular the plurality of
the people to whom he or she belongs, and who also pray to God through
the temple. Solomon himself, in the excerpt from the passage that Brahms
selected from Wisdom of Solomon 9, closely connects his identity as a leader
of the nation with his divine charge to build the temple in Jerusalem. Thus,
the house serves here as a metaphor for the nation and the nation as a meta-
phor for the individual.
Brahms’s interest in Wisdom of Solomon 9 goes beyond the simple mark
he made in his Luther Bible. As I noted earlier, he also copied out nearly the
entire chapter on folios 18v–19r of his biblical notebook. In that source the
connection between Wisdom of Solomon 9 and 1 Kings is more evident; at
the top of folio 15v, the first text among those that Brahms entered in ink, is
1 Kings 6:11–12, which also refers to the building of the temple, the people
of Israel, and God’s promise to Solomon’s father, David:
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 61

1 Kings 6:11, 12 Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon.

“Concerning this house that you are building, if you
will walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances, and
keep all my commandments by walking in them,
then I will establish my promise with you, which I
made to your father David. I will dwell among the
children of Israel, and will not forsake my people
Israel.” 12So Solomon built the house and finished it.

Whereas the connections between this text and Wisdom of Solomon 9 are
obvious, the relation of either to the texts that fall between them on folios
15v–18v in the notebook is obscure. Those texts, Ecclesiasticus 41:1–4, Ec-
clesiastes 3:18–22 and 4:1–4, and 1 Corinthians 13, almost exactly consti-
tute the texts of the Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121 (Brahms used all but Eccle-
siastes 3:18 for the songs). In its general tone, as well as its emphasis on
God’s ways and promise to his people, the 1 Kings passage seems to reso-
nate more with the op. 109 texts on 13v–14r than with those of the Vier
ernste Gesänge. But this text most probably does not carry over from previ-
ous folios, as did those at the top of 13v (Hebrews 4:16) and 14v (Genesis
28:16–17, 22). Instead, it appears to serve as an opening statement that
leads eventually to the last text in the notebook, Wisdom of Solomon 9:1–
12 (folios 18v–19r).
At first reading, it is difficult to understand how the texts to the Vier
ernste Gesänge, which are copied on folios 15v–18r, could belong to a com-
posite group that begins and ends with the “Solomon as King” texts. The
texts of op. 121 make no reference to rulers or laws, and seem instead to
dwell on issues of life, death, and love. But a closer examination of all six
texts on folios 15v–19r reveals themes—some overt, some implicit—that
bind them as a unified group and create a context in which they fit conceptu-
ally between the framing texts from 1 Kings and Wisdom of Solomon. In
the notebook, the texts of op. 121 are entered in the order listed above.
Ecclesiasticus 41:1–2, as it leads off this arrangement, produces a decidedly
different effect than it does in its eventual setting as song no. 3 of op. 121.
Whereas it flows logically from the Ecclesiastes texts that precede it in those
songs (and follow it here in the notebook), its focus on death seems to be
introduced quite abruptly after 1 Kings 6:11–12. But the message in verses
1–2, that death can be viewed in opposite manners by the old and the
young, leads in verses 3–4 to a statement on immortality: “Do not fear
death’s decree for you; remember those who went before you and those who
will come after.”
Although Brahms did not set verses 3 and 4 (nos. 5 and 6 in the Luther Bi-
62 Brahms and the German Spirit

ble), he cites them with an incipit after the verses that he did copy, writing:
“5. (Fürchte den Tod nicht/).” Sirach’s sentiments are not far removed from
the emphasis in both 1 Kings and Wisdom of Solomon on the succession of
generations, the continuance of God’s promise to his people, and the need to
follow God’s path (a sentiment echoed elsewhere in the biblical passages
copied into the notebook, as we have seen). Indeed, one can understand the
remainder of chapter 41 in Ecclesiasticus to refer directly to the fate of Solo-
mon, described throughout 1–2 Kings, as one who strays from the way of
the Lord in his old age and whose offspring suffer as a consequence.60
Within his Bible, Brahms marked several other passages from Ecclesiasticus,
including 43:31–33 whose last verse reads, “For the Lord has made all
things, and to the godly He has granted wisdom.” Thus, whereas it may not
be immediately apparent from his selection of texts in his biblical notebook,
Brahms was certainly cognizant of the connections to the Wisdom of Solo-
mon as a gift from God and the later chapters of Ecclesiasticus.61 The two
passages from Ecclesiastes which follow on folios 16r and 16v continue the
theme of death raised by Ecclesiastes 41:1–4. Ecclesiastes 3:18–22 con-
cludes that one should be happy in one’s works, for these will last whereas
the flesh will not. Works carry a similar value in this passage to that borne
by a virtuous name in Ecclesiasticus 41 (as quoted in note 60).
The possibility that Brahms was considering a piece in which the Ecclesi-
astes texts and the “Gebet einen Königs” (Wisdom of Solomon 9) were to be
part of one composition or a unified opus is rendered still more plausible by
a citation to the latter text directly below Ecclesiastes 4:1–4 on folio 16v.
Brahms wrote that citation in pencil, unlike the main text on that page,
which is written in ink, which suggests that the two passages were not se-
lected or copied simultaneously. Having cited Wisdom of Solomon 9 at the
bottom of 16v, Brahms left the rest of that page and the facing one (17r)
blank, and copied all of 1 Corinthians 13 onto the next pair of folios (17v–
18r) before he finally entered the Wisdom text onto folios 18v–19r.62 It is
difficult to explain how the Corinthians text fit into Brahms’s plans. One ex-
planation could be that Brahms selected the Wisdom text after or (conceptu-
ally) concurrent with 1 Corinthians 13. In that scenario, the last two texts
may have been considered as separate possible conclusions to the larger
group. Later, perhaps around the same time he made the pencil markings in
the text of Wisdom of Solomon 9, Brahms could have made the pencil cita-
tion of that chapter below Ecclesiastes 4:1–3 on folio 16v, indicating that at
some point he was thinking of concluding the set with the Wisdom text
rather than 1 Corinthians 13. As alternate conclusions to the hypothetical
larger conception represented by the texts on 15v–19r, the Corinthians and
Wisdom texts would have imposed quite a different meaning on the texts
that preceded them. In essence the difference boils down to a faith in Wis-
 Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible 63

dom versus a faith in Love. Further still, we can categorize these separate
faiths as public versus private. In order to understand better how these dis-
tinctions might have occurred to Brahms and why he would eventually
choose a private over a public faith when he composed the Vier ernste
Gesänge in 1896, we must consider the likely time frame for his copying of
these texts into his notebook.
The two “Solomon as King” texts provide a reasonable hypothesis for
dating the entries on 15v–19r around 1888, the so-called Drei-Kaiser-Jahr
which witnessed the deaths of the ninety-year-old Emperor Wilhelm I in
March and of his successor, Frederick III, barely three months later. Brahms
was, according to Kalbeck, deeply moved by the “tragedy” of these events
and “felt the blow, which befell the royal family and house, the fatherland,
and the people, more painfully than many who were closer to the mon-
arch.”63 Wilhelm I, who had ascended to the throne in 1861, oversaw the
creation of a unified German state. His grandson Wilhelm II was only
twenty-nine when he took over the throne after the short reign of his father,
Frederick. In light of these circumstances, it is easy to read the 1 Kings pas-
sage as pertaining to the elder Wilhelm and the Wisdom of Solomon text
to the younger. Kalbeck makes the latter connection, going so far as to
assign the copying of the text to about the time of the new Kaiser’s first
speech.64 Wilhelm I was, after all, the king who had been made ruler of the
first unified German Kaiserreich, and Brahms had dedicated his
Triumphlied, op. 55, to him in 1871 upon the military victory over France
which brought the state into being. To any child of German Romanticism,
this could easily constitute the “establishment of my promise with you,
which I made to your father” (1 Kings 6:12).
Earlier, on folios 13v–14r, Brahms had already defined his idea of na-
tional identity through the concept of a pact between God and the Väter of
the German Volk: “Unsere Väter hofften auf dich . . . und sollst deinen
Kindern, und Kindeskindern kund thun” (Psalm 22:5–6), words that were
to become parts of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, op. 109. Indeed, for rea-
sons I take up during my discussion of op. 109 in Chapter 5, Brahms turned
back to those (apparently) previously copied texts when he composed the
Fest- und Gedenksprüche in 1888, rather than employing the texts begin-
ning on folio 15v which he probably copied closer to that time. In op. 109
the house metaphor occurs in passing and does not reveal the depth to
which this image occupied Brahms in his Bible reading. Only through con-
sidering the sources behind the scenes does the interconnectedness of poli-
tics and religion in Brahms’s music emerge more clearly.
When Brahms composed his Vier ernste Gesänge in 1896, he discarded
the more public texts on these pages, both the concluding chapter 9 of Wis-
dom of Solomon as well as the initial 1 Kings 6. What remained were not
64 Brahms and the German Spirit

only the intensely personal texts of songs one and two but also the hymn to
love of 1 Corinthians 13, which explicitly ranks wisdom (along with faith
and hope) beneath love. Whereas both wisdom and love are attributes that
may be more public at one time and more private at another, the Corinthi-
ans text lends itself far more strongly to a private and personal reading.65
Significant for the present context is the personal nature of this statement:
Brahms is commenting at least as much on his own situation near the end
of his life as he is on the world around him. When Brahms composed these
songs in the spring and early summer of 1896, he was unaware that he
had less than a year left to live. Nevertheless, he had suffered the loss of sev-
eral friends during the previous few years (and he would later unveil the
Vier ernste Gesänge among friends gathered after Clara Schumann’s
funeral), losses that, one could easily imagine, caused him to consider his
own mortality. By posing Christian love (caritas) as a balm for his grief,
Brahms was acknowledging the compatibility—perhaps even the necessary
interpenetration—of Romanticism and Lutheranism. Yet, in his original
conception, all of these texts bound up the religious with the national. And
if an older composer muses on his own life situation in the Vier ernste
Gesänge, we should also listen for the reverberations of the nation in that
music. The German Reich (like the Austrian Empire) was headed for trou-
bled times, and, as we shall see, Brahms knew it.66
 C H A
3 P T E R

Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45,

and the Apocalyptic Paradigm

Comfort and the Eternal Promise of Resolution

Brahms did not hesitate to use biblical texts for political expression, as the
“Gebet eines Königs” makes clear. And as I have previously argued, the very
use of Luther’s Bible and other German sacred texts can take on implicit na-
tionalistic (if not necessarily political) overtones. How does Ein deutsches
Requiem, op. 45, Brahms’s largest work on biblical texts, figure into this
equation? On the face of it there is nothing remotely political about this
piece. Rather it is usually understood as a personal philosophical statement
on the need for comfort by those who survive the dead. Perhaps a more ac-
curate statement, one made by Malcolm MacDonald in his 1990 Brahms bi-
ography, is that Brahms’s Requiem offers “consolatory meditation on the
common destiny of the dead and the living.”1
Reading the Requiem this way accords well with what is known of the
work’s impetus: Brahms’s reaction to the death of his friend and early
mentor Robert Schumann in 1856 and of Brahms’s own mother in 1865.
Brahms actually composed the piece over the course of fourteen years in
three stages. An earlier version of movement two was composed first, in
1854, as part of a work written in reaction to Schumann’s attempted suicide
in that year. Brahms was unable to finish that piece and eventually reused
parts of it for his Piano Concerto no. 1 in D Minor, op. 15, which he com-
pleted in 1857. The next stage of the Requiem’s development is difficult to
trace, but appears to have been spurred by the death of Brahms’s mother in
1865. Within a few months of her death, the first and fourth movements
had been finished, and the third, sixth, and seventh followed over the course
of the next year and a half. Only after the official premiere of the work at
Bremen on 10 April 1868 (Good Friday), and a repeat performance there
three weeks later, did Brahms compose the movement with soprano solo
66 Brahms and the German Spirit

and choir, which was then inserted as the fifth movement in the complete
seven-movement work that was published later that year and premiered in
Leipzig on 18 February 1869.
The addition of the fifth movement strongly affected the character of
op. 45 both musically and textually. Musically, it provided a more gradual
progression of keys from the middle to the end of the work. After the abrupt
shift to E-flat in movement four (following on the heels of D major at the
end of movement three), the G major of the inserted movement five relates
to the preceding key, but through a fairly distant third relationship, as op-
posed to the stronger, relative minor relationship of C minor in movement
six (which originally followed directly from the E-flat of movement four).
Textually, movement five reinjected comfort (Trost) as a main theme of the
piece. “Trost” is presented in the opening phrase of the Requiem: “Selig sind
die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet werden.” Although the baritone
soloist of movement three briefly takes up the question of Trost in his last
utterance (“Nun, Herr, wes soll ich mich trösten?” bars 142–144), he does
so as an expression of doubt and anxiety. Only in movement five does antic-
ipation of comfort, in fact its promised delivery, become the central theme
of the work.
Brahms had turned to the theme of “comfort” several times in his selec-
tion of sacred texts. At the end of the “Warum” motet, op. 74, no. 1, for ex-
ample, comfort derives from the knowledge that death is God’s will: “Mit
Fried’ und Freud’ ich fahr dahin / in Gottes Willen / getrost ist mir mein
Herz und Sinn / sanft und stille.” In the second song of the Vier ernste
Gesänge, op. 121, by contrast, comfort eludes both those who suffer and
those who inflict suffering:

Ecclesiastes 4:1 Und siehe, da waren Tränen derer, die Unrecht litten und
hatten keinen Tröster,
und die ihnen Unrecht täten waren zu mächtig,
daß sie keinen Tröster haben konnten.
[And see, there were tears for they who suffered injustice
and had no one to comfort them, / and those who
committed injustice were too strong, / [so] that they
could have no one comfort them.]

In addition to these passages that found their way into musical works,
Brahms copied, but never set, the series of Trost texts on folio 14v of the
biblical notebook that I mentioned in the previous chapter. Three consecu-
tive texts on that page form a subgroup that expresses a nostalgic sense of
sorrow, characterized by words such as “dahin“ and “vergangen,” and the
reference to sorrow for one’s (presumably deceased) mother:
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 67

Wisdom of Solomon 2:4 Unser Leben fährt dahin, als wäre eine Wolke da
gewesen.
[Our life will pass away, as if a cloud had been
there.]

Jeremiah 8:20 Die Ernte ist vergangen, der Sommer ist dahin.
[The harvest is past, the summer is ended.]

Psalm 35:14 Ich ging traurig, wie einer, der Leide trägt über
seine Mutter.
[I went about as one who laments for his
mother.]

These are followed on the same page by a second group of three texts,
which, while not necessarily reversing the mood of the first three, neverthe-
less point toward resolution by moving the focus from sorrow to comfort
(Trost):

2 Corinthians 7:4 Ich bin erfüllt mit Trost, ich bin überschwänglich in
Freuden, in aller unserer Trübsal.
[I am filled with comfort, I am overfilled with joy amid
all our affliction.]
Psalm 119:82 Meine Augen sehnen sich nach deinem Wort, und sagen:
Wann tröstest du mich?
[My eyes long for your word (promise) and ask: When
will you comfort me?]
Job 21:34 Wie tröstet ihr mich so vergeblich!
[How you comfort me so idly!]

Although Brahms likely copied these passages into his notebook after
1877, thus long after the Requiem was completed in 1869, their similarities
to the Requiem are clear.2 Compare, for example, the Wisdom of Solomon
2:4 text above with Psalm 39:8 from movement three: “Sie gehen daher wie
ein Schemen.” More generally, Jeremiah 8:20 above recalls the withered
grass and fall blossoms of 1 Peter 1:24 in movement two of op. 45. And, of
course, the wording of Psalm 35:14 above is strikingly similar to Isaiah
66:13 in movement five (“Ich will euch trösten wie einen seine Mutter
tröstet”), with the connection to that movement’s text strengthened by the
word “traurig,” which echoes “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” (John 16:22).
Thereafter it is specifically the Trost words in the next three passages on
folio 14v that relate generally to the text of op. 45. Comfort, or Trost, is a
central theme in the Requiem; it appears immediately in the opening verse
from Matthew 5:4 (“Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet
68 Brahms and the German Spirit

werden”) and again in the texts from movements three and five mentioned
above. These two references from middle movements of the piece seem to
form a separate inner dialogue, as a solo male voice in movement three seeks
comfort that is offered—with obvious autobiographical connotations—by a
solo female voice in movement five, “as a mother comforts her child.”
Brahms affords comfort a dualistic nature in op. 45: comfort is promised,
and thus serves as a pivot between that which is and that which will be. By
referring to the initial promise of Trost throughout the Requiem, Brahms is
able to present a dichotomous viewpoint in the piece—that of the here and
now and that of the hereafter. And as this theme recurs and develops across
the work’s seven movements, the separation between mundane and spiritual
time realms emerges as a central idea in the piece.
Temporal divisions derive logically from the opening versicle, Christ’s
words (from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5) on those who bear
grief now but shall be comforted in the future. And this pattern continues
further in verses 5 and 6 from Psalm 126, which make up the rest of the text
to movement one:

sorrow now (present) comfort then (future)

Matthew 5:4 Blessed are they who bear grief for they shall be comforted
Psalm 126:5, 6 They who sow tears shall reap joy
They go forth and weep, and and come with joy and
carry noble seed bring their sheaf

Some of this imagery is then picked up by the text of the second movement,
where the farmer waits for the fruit of the earth before receiving rain, and
where joy and gladness shall replace pain and suffering.

1 Peter 1:24 For all flesh is like grass / and all the glory of man like the
blossoms of
the grass. / The grass withers and the blossoms fall off.

James 5:7 Be patient now, dear brothers. / until the Lord’s future. / See,
the farmer waits / for the precious fruit of the earth, / and is
patient for it, / until he receives the morning rain and the
evening rain.

In a larger sense, the whole text of the second movement projects the minute
oppositions of the previous one, as the transience of human flesh at the
movement’s outset is pitted against the eternal endurance of the Lord’s word
at its conclusion. Similar oppositions between worldly suffering and heav-
enly consolation across the work’s seven movements help to carry the piece
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 69

through its various views of life and death, all deriving from the initial op-
position of sorrow and promised comfort.
The possibility that the promise of comfort might be located simulta-
neously within human (worldly) time and beyond it in (divine) eternity is
central to the temporal framework of the Requiem and, by extension, to the
work’s relevance to broader modes of thinking in nineteenth-century Ger-
many. Although I pursue this idea more fully later in this chapter, it is worth
noting here how Brahms alludes to temporal ambiguity through a historical
confrontation of musical styles in his setting of the opening versicle from
Matthew (see ex. A.2 in the Appendix). When the chorus introduces the
opening text at bar 15 of movement one, the archaic quality of the sound
contrasts sharply with the murky and increasingly dissonant orchestral in-
troduction that precedes it. The pure part writing, suspensions, syllabic
overlaps, and modal inflections of the choir evoke music of an earlier era
and specifically evoke the stile antico motet style of Heinrich Schütz and his
mid-seventeenth-century contemporaries. But that style is itself a fossilized
look back at the High Renaissance polyphonic style of the sixteenth century.
Brahms thus places the promise of comfort in a rich, telescoping musico-his-
torical framework. We look back from the (nineteenth-century) present as
represented in Brahms’s modern orchestral introduction (especially the slid-
ing chromatic harmonies of bars 11–15) and the ensuing accompanied set-
ting of the verse in bars 29–46, toward an earlier (seventeenth-century) style
that contains a backward glance of its own. At the end of the first large pe-
riod of the movement (continuing beyond the musical example), the stylis-
tic distinction between temporal realms disintegrates completely. Already in
bars 27–34 the orchestra’s echo of the choir’s cadence (bars 26–29) and the
trading of subphrases between choir and orchestra suggested a rejoining of
these previously isolated forces, before they merge completely in the long
pre-cadential passage of bars 37–42. Melding these two styles within the
setting of the opening verse helps project the promise and anticipation of
comfort across separate temporal realms.3
Within this opening to the piece one hears two melodic ideas that are of-
ten cited as ur-motives for the entire Requiem. The first, the violas’ initial
gesture (Bã–C–D–C–Bã–A–G–A) has frequently been attributed to the cho-
rale “Nun wer den lieben Gott läßt walten” (which Brahms is purported to
have mentioned as a chorale that “lay at the root of the entire work”); and
the opening three-note ascent in the sopranos at the words “Selig sind” (F–
A–Bã) has been cited as a central motive from which most of the themes in
the piece derive.4 I am not comfortable with either nominee, and wonder if
both do not tell us more about how we like to think of Brahms than they do
about the music of the Requiem itself. For example, each plays into a sepa-
rate favored truism about the composer, as I discussed in the introductory
70 Brahms and the German Spirit

chapter: one suggests that he was inspired by an ancient Protestant hymn

(note Bach lurking in the background), while the other “proves” the econ-
omy and integral unity of his art.
What does seem to hold the first movement together, however, is the ver-
bal gesture of the words “getröstet werden” and the musical phrases it gen-
erates. Several details argue for the verbal primacy of these motives: the text
repetition at the word “getröstet” in bars 24–27 and again at 40–45; the or-
chestral echoes of the distinctive soprano figure (A–D–Bã–G–F) in bars 43–
47; and finally the repetition of these events near the end of the movement.
Although the last item may seem gratuitous, Brahms inserts a new, enig-
matic orchestral interlude there (bar 136) that derives from the previously
mentioned orchestral echo of the choir’s “getröstet werden” clause (bars
28–29). That cadence was already reiterated at the end of the first large pe-
riod in the movement, bars 45–47, where the echo cadenced deceptively to
D-flat major exploiting the focus on D-flat from the opening phrase (a point
I explicate later on). Now, at the end of the movement, D-flat is gone, but its
enharmonic spelling, C-sharp, colors a new deceptive cadence to A major
(bar 136; see ex. 3.1). Out of that distantly placed echo, Brahms develops a
sequence of cadences that progress upward in real terms (from c′′ in viola 1
at bar 137 to Bã′′ in the flute at bar 139), but are held together by an under-
lying descending chain of thirds, one of Brahms’s favorite architectonic
devices. The effect is dazzling; out of the surprising A major in bar 136, the
listener is drawn with accelerating musical speed toward a prolonged domi-
nant cadence in bars 140–144. There the voices enter, and what had been a
stretto of harmonic progressions in the preceding orchestral interlude be-
comes a cascade of voices on the text “getröstet werden,” all driving home
those words as the central meaning of the movement and F major as its
home key. And the telescoping chronological framework that was created
by the opening clash of musico-historical styles is reinterpreted more tangi-
bly as an audibly perceptible headlong rush to the “present,” that is, the
strongest cadence to the tonic in the entire movement. Or, heard another
way, the multiplicity implied by the shifting harmonic perspective of bars
136–139 and by the stretto of bars 140–144 could represent a variety of
temporalities that are drawn together by the eternal promise of comfort.
The representation of juxtaposed temporalities through abrupt harmonic
shifts is played out more vividly in the last movement. This is a special qual-
ity of the outer movements in the Requiem, which move independently of
their inner counterparts—all of which will be discussed shortly. Movement
five, by contrast, brings this interaction between the present need for, and
the historical promise of, comfort into a more personal and visceral focus,
largely through the quality of interaction between the soprano soloist and
the choir. Brahms composed this movement while staying at his father’s
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 71

Rising pitch B '''

c'

     
          
136
 
Flts.+obs.

    
dolce
p

             
cresc.

 
Horns
    
Bssns.


High strings
      

     

p
cresc.

           
cresc.
 
Low strings

A F D B
Descending thirds

140  dim.
         
   
    
  
    
    
   
f dim.

f dim.
 ge - trö - stet wer - den, sie solln
Sop. 
Alto       f
            
ge - trö - stet wer - den,
dim. ge - trö - stet wer - den.
ge - trö
 - stet
 wer

- den
      
 
      
f
Ten.
Bass     
f sie dim. sol - - - len
          

   
p

     
f dim.

   
    
p

Example 3.1 Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, movement one, bars 136–144: rising pitch and
descending thirds.
72 Brahms and the German Spirit

home in Hamburg during the spring of 1868, following the two highly ac-
claimed Bremen performances of the (then) six-movement work. Possibly
fulfilling a preexisting seven-movement plan, he chose to add a second solo
with chorus to the piece.5 It is by far the quietest, most uniformly slow, and
most intimate movement in the Requiem and thereby lends itself to bio-
graphical and subjective interpretation: as an elegy to Brahms’s mother, for
example.6
Whereas the relationship of the baritone soloist and choir in movement
three (and later, on a smaller scale, in movement six) is fairly conventional
(i.e., the soloist introduces textual and musical material that is then ex-
panded upon by the choir), in movement five the soloist and choir seem
to operate in closely related but clearly delineated spheres. One notices this
immediately in the disposition of texts: although the texts are similar in
content, the soloist and choir never sing the same text. As displayed below,
the soprano’s words from John 16:22 resemble those of the choir from
Ecclesiasticus 51:35 when she sings “Ich will euch wieder sehen . . .” imme-
diately before they sing “Ich will euch trösten . . .”:

Bars 4–16 Bars 16–23

Soprano solo Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit; aber Ich will euch wieder sehen und
(John 16:22) euer Herz soll sich freuen, und
euere Freude soll niemand von euch
nehmen.

Choir Ich will euch trösten wie einen

(Isaiah 66:13) seine Mutter tröstet.

And later, when the soprano moves on to Ecclesiasticus 51:35, the key word
“Trost” in that text (from bar 34) prompts the choir to reiterate the relevant
passage (“Ich will euch trösten”) from the Isaiah text:

Bars 27–31 Bars 31–37; 38–49

Soprano solo Sehet mich an: ich habe eine kleine und habe großen
(Ecclesiasticus 51:35) Zeit Mühe und Arbeit gehabt Trost funden;

Choir (Isaiah 66:13) Ich will euch trösten

The relationship between soloist and choir here is far more than merely
syntactical, however: Brahms sets each of these text passages to melodic
lines that allude not only to each other but to other points in the movement
as well (see example A.3 in the Appendix). When the soprano sings “I will
see you again” at bar 16, she reiterates the opening eighth-note melody of
the movement, first heard (and now doubled by) the violins; as a return of
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 73

that material, then, her melody musically acts out the meaning of the text it-
self. But refractions of the opening melody have been occurring constantly
since the movement began. In the example I have highlighted significant me-
lodic entrances through the first fourteen bars of the movement. Although
they are certainly not identical, all are clearly related. In particular, the solo
wind incipits that accompany the soprano soloist’s initial melody seem at
once like echoes of the strings at the beginning of the movement and like re-
fractions of the soprano’s slower melody. Likewise, the choir’s material at
bar 18 recalls the slower quarter-note motion of the cellos and basses from
bars 1–3, while the choral sopranos echo the soloist in augmentation and
transposed to D major. To add further depth to the swirl of thematic refer-
ences beginning in bar 18, the flutes and clarinets simultaneously provide
real-time (i.e., in eighth-note motion) and harmonically enriched recall of
the violin’s initial material, just as they had against the soprano soloist’s first
entrance (from bar 4).
What separates the winds’ and the choir’s material beginning in bar 16
most strongly from what had come before is the abrupt shift from the tonic
G major to its dominant, D major.7 Although Brahms frequently employs
tonic-dominant formal polarities within the first section of three-part song
form movements like this one, the lack of a modulatory transition is striking
here.8 A gradual change to D major would have been out of place, for it
would imply a development from one temporality to another rather than il-
lustrating the isolation of the soloist, and her promise to return, from the
choir and its offer of comfort.
By suddenly placing the material at bar 18 in a related yet clearly delin-
eated key area, Brahms intensifies the related but separate quality of the
movement’s texts. In fact, the tension between tonic and dominant is un-
commonly strong in this movement. Brahms studiously avoids any strong
closure to G major, opting for a delicate balancing act instead, in which D
major, as often as not, serves to begin and end periods, either as a dominant
harmony within G major or as a momentarily tonicized key area. Take, for
example, the opening of the movement. Brahms begins off-balance rhythmi-
cally by displacing the bass line from where we might expect it to be,
thereby landing on D for the first downbeat of the piece rather than the
tonic G, which might be more conventional. (As I discuss shortly, this fits
into an important pattern of off-balance entrances in the Requiem.) Then,
when the strings finally have righted themselves rhythmically enough to pro-
duce a convincing half cadence to the dominant at bar 3, the soprano enters
on D as the dominant continues unresolved through bar 5. Even when the
tonic G major arrives in bar 6, it takes on a flat seventh, F natural, which
pushes the harmony to C (bar 7), which then in turn is chromaticized to a C-
sharp (viola, beat 4) en route back to D beginning in bar 8.
74 Brahms and the German Spirit

Having hovered delicately through this initial floating harmonic arrange-

ment, the soprano seems to straddle the two key areas when she joins the
choir in bars 19–23: although her melody fits easily within the prevailing
key of D major there, nothing would preclude harmonizing her melody in G
major. More significantly, her closing gesture, E–D, is only one in a series of
such melodic cadences at transition points throughout the movement, be-
ginning with the opening phrase in violin 1 upon which she alighted in bar
4. There the direction of the motive is upward (although the upbeat eighth
notes in the cellos and bass offer a countereffect whereby E might be heard
as the first note in the pair), but more often E–D cadences in this movement
form falling gestures that are usually appoggiaturas. Brahms uses this mo-
tive at main transition points, and nearly all fall on full or half cadences to D
major (such as the two that I have just mentioned).
Bars 46–49 are pivotal on this count; they bring the modulatory middle
section of the movement to completion, shortly after the soprano and or-
chestra have ended a tortuous harmonic path away from and back to D ma-
jor, through B-flat and B major on the way. Just as the choir had punctuated
the arrival to B major in bar 34 with an oddly dissonant yet sweet cadential
comma, they return at bar 43 with the same material, now transposed to D
major to begin what should be a retransition to the tonic G. As the choir ex-
tends the cadence to D major in bar 46 for three additional bars, all but the
basses close with suspensions and/or appoggiaturas. Brahms accentuates
these figures by allowing each of the top three choral parts in bar 48 to move
on a different beat. Against the choir, the orchestra reintroduces the first vio-
lins’ undulating D–E figure from bar 4, now refracted throughout the en-
semble and expanded to other pitches (and intervals) as well : Få–G in the
viola and Cå–E in violin 2 and flute 2. The direction of the dyad is yet more
ambiguous here, alternating between D–E and E–D, but finally ending with
the choral sopranos on E–D.
Again the E–D motive accompanies a vague transitional moment in the
movement. For as the music crosses the double bar at 49, what initially
sounds like a recapitulation proves instead to be more modulatory and de-
velopmental material (a typically Brahmsian “recapitulatory overlap”).9 D
major is never more ambiguous than in these bars: initially thwarted by the
C natural in the flutes, its resolution to G major brings no more stability as
the added F’s in bars 51–52 create a new dominant-seventh harmony to fur-
ther propel the harmony toward C minor (bar 53) and E-flat minor before
settling on D again in bar 59. From there the movement finally settles into G
major, ending with a codetta in bars 72–82, where the soprano reempha-
sizes the E–D motive as she reiterates the words “ich will euch wider sehen”
three times while the choir, for the first time, adds its syntactically matching
verse, “ich will euch Trösten.” The floating quality of that final D from the
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 75

soloist is significant; the ambiguous opening G major chord of the ensuing

sixth movement maintains D as its uppermost pitch, and the sopranos enter
on D in bar 3. That, however, is a separate issue to which I return in greater
detail near the end of the chapter.
Everything about the fifth movement of Ein deutsches Requiem conveys a
delicate balance, epitomized perhaps by the E–D motive at its end. As a last
breath of calm before the tumult of the sixth movement, this balance should
not be mistaken for resolution. This is a balance born of tension, a cautious
perch on a precipice. That musical quality reflects perfectly the anticipation
of the text and the division between the soloist and the choir and the tempo-
ral duality captured by the present promise of future Trost.

The Word as Apocalypse

Within the tradition of interpreting the fifth movement as Brahms’s elegy to
his mother, Michael P. Steinberg hears the soprano solo as the very voice of
Christiane Brahms. Steinberg takes the choir, by contrast, “to represent mu-
sic itself, which claims the capacity to console as a mother would,” thus em-
powering music with broad iconic meaning: “The consolation no longer
available from the mother resides now in music alone, now in the inner self
alone. Expressed in the Requiem in the reminiscent presence of a soprano
voice uttering words of literal consolation, the consolation of music is then
internalized, in the later works, into patterns of sound alone.”10 Steinberg’s
reading is a bold attempt to transfer a basic and deep meaning into the abso-
lute musical canon (as represented by Brahms): an enduring quest in the tra-
dition of music criticism of the past two centuries. If Steinberg is right, the
Requiem is certainly the piece to which one ought to look for a source of
meaning in Brahms.
Locating comfort in “patterns of sound” alone, however, privileges Brahms’s
role as a composer above all his other possible identities. By personally se-
lecting sixteen separate passages from the Old and New Testaments as the
text for the work, Brahms also strongly identified himself in the Requiem as
a reader of Luther’s Bible and—by extension—as a lover of the German lan-
guage and the Protestant culture in which it developed. Steinberg may be
correct in theorizing that Brahms retreated into a “North German tradition
stretching back to Bach and Schütz,”11 but the tradition is far broader than
that. Music is only one component of the larger North German cultural tra-
dition within which Brahms located himself and from which he derived
“comfort.” Lutheranism was surely a central aspect of that culture. And it is
risky to consider a work such as op. 45 without paying some attention to its
theological meaning, or at least to how religious thinking played into the
work. As I argued in the preceding chapter, Brahms’s religiosity is hard to
76 Brahms and the German Spirit

pin down, but it is best described as cultural Protestantism; his deep interest
in the words of Luther’s Bible, even the faith therein, were more a matter of
learned culture than of practiced religion.
It was inevitable that some of Brahms’s contemporaries would seek a
more definitive Christian statement than Brahms was willing to offer. Brahms
was immediately confronted with this challenge by Reinthaler’s suggestion
to add a more proper Christian core to this work for its Bremen premiere.
When Brahms distanced himself from the word “deutsch” in his response,
he may have been reacting to the religious overtones of then-current poli-
tics in German-speaking lands. (See the Reinthaler-Brahms exchange in
Chapter 2.) Brahms’s ambivalence about his own chosen title for the piece
had surfaced earlier in letters to Clara Schumann and Albert Dietrich where
he referred to it as “a sort of German Requiem” and “my so-called German
Requiem,” respectively.12 At least two possible explanations account for
Brahms’s misgivings about the title of op. 45. The first concerns the connec-
tions between the title’s cultural meaning and political circumstances in Ger-
many during 1866. Brahms seems to have worked most continuously on
the Requiem during the winter and spring of that year; Hermann Levi as-
serted that most of the work was composed at Karlsruhe, where Brahms
was living with Julius Allgeyer from February to April 1866.13 It was during
these same months that the war between Prussia and Austria broke out. Al-
though brief, the war marked a decisive turning point in the political and so-
cial history of German-speaking lands in the nineteenth century. For dec-
ades, and especially since the revolutionary year of 1848, German political
leaders had sought to establish a großdeutsch state, one that would encom-
pass both Protestant and Catholic lands. The Austro-Prussian War dashed
those hopes. At the same time, Prussia’s military was propelled toward
its preeminent position in central Europe, presaging the victory over France
a few years later that completed the kleindeutsch solution of a unified
Kaiserreich under Prussia’s King Wilhelm and his chancellor, Bismarck. It
was not long before Prussia’s Protestant Church began to exert consider-
able influence in Wilhelm’s government and Bismarck embarked on his
Kulturkampf against Catholic influence in the empire.
In contrast to what would be his enthusiastic response to the events of
1870–71 (to which his Triumphlied, op. 55, stands as a monument), Brahms
was apparently opposed to the Austro-Prussian War. In 1866 he wrote to
Allgeyer, “Whether they fight for thirty or for seven years, it will be fought
as little for humanity now as when they already fought for thirty and for
seven years,” a reference to the religious wars of the seventeenth century.14
Brahms’s friend and biographer Max Kalbeck averred that in the mid-1860s
Brahms, like many other German liberals, had not yet been won over to
the kleindeutsch Prussian cause and still had misgivings about Bismarck, de-
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 77

spite the deep veneration he later developed for the “Iron Chancellor.”15 In
this context, especially when one considers the strong religious overtones of
the Austrian-Prussian conflict, it is quite possible to understand Brahms’s
disclaimer in October 1867 that he would “gladly omit the [word] German”
in the work’s title as a comment on political events of the day. In sum,
Brahms might have been expressing a fear that with that title he would ap-
pear to be siding with Prussia, in that the German language to which the
word “deutsch” in the work’s title refers could be understood to represent
northern Protestantism as opposed to Austrian Catholicism.
If this was the case, Brahms’s sensitivity to the issue might also account
for an acerbic remark he made to his friend Adolf Schubring, a prominent
music critic, who in 1869 published the first substantial analytical commen-
tary of the piece in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. In his essay
Schubring observed that the various themes of the third movement’s eight
sections all derive from three manifestations of a basic contrapuntal con-
figuration. In a letter of 16 February 1869, Brahms thoroughly rejected
Schubring’s analysis, claiming the any resemblance among the themes was
at best coincidental and at worst a sign of weak inspiration. More impor-
tant, he added the sarcastic quip, “Have you then not yet discovered the po-
litical allusion in my Requiem? ‘Gott erhalte’ was begun precisely in the year
1866.”16 Brahms is alluding here to the similarly coincidental resemblance
between the orchestra’s introductory theme in movement one (see Appen-
dix, ex. A.2) and Haydn’s patriotic hymn “Gott erhalte unsern Kaiser” (per-
haps better known by now as “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles”). Al-
though Brahms’s suggestion that his tune had a political source is surely not
to be taken seriously, his comment does reveal his awareness—perhaps his
anxiety—that his piece could be rightly or wrongly construed in political
terms that had been associated with the Austro-Prussian War.
Brahms’s religious convictions, murky though they may be, can more of-
ten than not be connected to secular concerns (philosophy, historicity, the
veneration of folk culture, and so on). Religion also strongly infused poli-
tics in nineteenth-century Germany, and the Requiem belongs to a small
group of Brahms’s sacred works that access a major vein of religiously in-
spired political thinking of the day: the apocalyptic anticipation of the new
German Reich. Along with two other biblically based works, the Triumph-
lied, op. 55 (1872), and the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, op. 109 (1889), the
Requiem can be related to millennial concepts engaged by nationalistic fer-
vor over the founding of the empire. Clearly, the latter two opera prompt
more obvious and direct connections to apocalyptic thinking. Brahms based
his Triumphlied on selections from Revelation 19, the most apocalyptic
book in the Bible. He began composing the Triumphlied in the fall of 1870
in anticipatory celebration over the imminent Prussian victory in the war
78 Brahms and the German Spirit

with France. In the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, three pieces for a cappella
double chorus, Brahms uses the historical aura of the Bible and a massive
vocal effect to depict the German nation directly and to comment on omi-
nous divisions in the Kaiserreich near the end of the century.
The Requiem, as I outlined at the beginning of the chapter, was occa-
sioned by more personal circumstances. But just as the German language of
its text raises issues of cultural nationalism, certain features of the musical
structure in op. 45 speak to the influence of biblical historical paradigms,
and specifically to an apocalyptic worldview, on Brahms’s compositional
approach in the piece. Apocalypse is merely one aspect of biblical history,
and only one of many that has affected Western art and culture. Given the
Bible’s centrality in the canon of Western religion, morality, and literature,
it is hardly remarkable that its underlying structures and premises have
left their mark on a variety of literary and artistic works. Several qualities
distinguish biblical history from the historical views that characterized
Greco-Roman thought. Cataloguing those differences, M. H. Abrams notes
that “while the main line of change in the prominent classical patterns of
history . . . is continuous and gradual, the line of change in Christian history
(and this difference is pregnant with consequences) is right angled: the key
events are abrupt, cataclysmic, and make a drastic, even an absolute, differ-
ence.”17 As Abrams goes on to list the great events of the Bible (Creation,
the Fall, the birth of Jesus, and the Second Coming), he emphasizes the im-
portance of separate ages in the biblical story. In this scheme the Apocalypse
ushers in the final age, “the last act of the drama of history.”18 That age is,
however, closely related to the origins of human history: the biblical end re-
turns us to the beginning, to an age of felicity. The various ages, then, are re-
lated, even if they are separated by sharp and swift divisions. In distinction
to our modern point of view, then (in which the word apocalypse is associ-
ated with “vague connotations of doom,” according to Frank Kermode),19
apocalypse can signify the arrival of redemption and renewal around sud-
den and violent events.
The French Revolution was seen as just such an event by nineteenth-
century Europeans. Particularly in light of the Revolution’s challenge to
traditional theosophy, the familiar right-angle outlines of biblical history
were adapted to mundane human history. Abrams writes, “The later eigh-
teenth century was another age of apocalyptic expectation, when the glory
and promise of the American Revolution and, much more, of the early
years of the French Revolution, revived among a number of English Non-
conformists . . . millenarian excitement,” adding, “Major Romantic poets
shared this hope in the French Revolution as the portent of universal felicity,
as did Hölderlin and other young radicals in Germany.”20 When the promise
of the Revolution faded, the paradigm of apocalypticism remained, chan-
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 79

neled now through more secular goals. One realization of the apocalyptic
was in the teleological paradigm that infuses much literature and other artis-
tic endeavor throughout the nineteenth century. For Abrams, the case in
point is Wordsworth’s Prelude; for Kermode, it is a series of canonical liter-
ary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although one hears less
mention of apocalyptic paradigms in music (before the likes of Wagner and
Mahler anyway), it is perhaps the same force that drives the shift in empha-
sis toward the ends of large-scale works, symphonies in particular. Anticipa-
tion and focus on a utopian end is familiar enough to music historians: the
orientation toward endings in German music of the nineteenth century is a
commonplace of our critical tradition. To be sure, this is the spiritual “Be-
yond” to which critics such as E. T. A. Hoffmann claim music has the ability
to carry us.21
Recognizing the intersection of religious myth and historical paradigm as
a type, Kermode writes of the “myth of Transition,” the idea that “before
the end there is a period which does not properly belong either to the End or
to the saeculum preceding it. It has its own characteristics.”22 The myth in-
volves believing that one lives at the critical turning point in human history,
the final moment, in effect, before all moments cease. Imagining such a sce-
nario allows one to see one’s own death as equated with the end of time.
Apocalypse, Kermode argues, is a fictive account that allows us to project
ourselves beyond the age of transition, beyond our here and now, to imagine
the end (and beginning, for that matter) that we cannot know. Kermode
writes: “Men, like poets, rush ‘into the middest,’ in medias res, when they
are born; they also die in mediis rebus, and to make sense of their span they
need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives
and to poems. The End, they imagine, will reflect their irreducibly interme-
diary occupations. They fear it, and as far as we can see have always done
so; the End is a figure of their own deaths.”23 Our life, then, is part of the
transition, our death part of the greater finality.
An important component in the projection beyond the end is the idea of
timelessness. Ironically, music—its temporal nature notwithstanding—may
be the ideal medium for articulating timelessness. Just as the Romantics val-
ued music above other arts for its nonreferential abstract qualities, music is
best able to depict the “‘dissociation’ from earthly dependence—from pur-
poses as well as from emotional imitation—to be raised to the depiction of
the celestial.”24 Divisions between earthly and heavenly realms may be de-
fined along several different axes, one of which is temporal: the presence of
time in human existence, and the absence of time in divine existence. Within
Brahms’s Requiem itself, temporality is not so overtly messianic. Rather it
arises through the dichotomous nature of the comfort promise—something
offered in the present (and running throughout human time) that will come
80 Brahms and the German Spirit

in a realm beyond human time, in eternity or the final age. Perhaps it is the
distinction Brahms draws between these temporal realms that separates his
from standard Requiem Mass settings of the Western tradition; whereas the
typical Latin Requiem is apocalyptic in the more conventional sense (fo-
cusing on the Last Judgment), Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem is apocalyptic
in a deeper sense, referring as it does to the profound impact of the biblical-
historical narrative on the modern paradigms of human history.
From its premiere down to the present, commentators have attempted to
compare Brahms’s German Requiem with the Latin Requiem Mass, not-
ing—almost unanimously—that Brahms’s work focuses on comfort for the
living rather than salvation for the souls of the dead (à la MacDonald). Me-
diation between the common destiny of the dead and the living is epito-
mized by the transformation of the opening F major music and the words
“Selig sind die da Leid tragen” (Blessed are those who mourn) at the return
of that F major music in the final movement and its words, “Selig sind die
Toten” (Blessed are the dead). The significance of that transformation for
most listeners is borne out by the frequent attempts to demonstrate formal
symmetry in the Requiem. Audibly, symmetry is suggested by the return to F
major, the clear thematic links in the outer movements, and the syntactical
parallelism around the “Selig” phrases that I just noted. A symmetrical in-
terpretation of the Requiem depends on hearing the F major first and sev-
enth movements as a connected part of the overall harmonic scheme (which
I have outlined in fig. 3.1). In my own hearing of the work, however, I have
always been struck at how little the final movement sounds like a progres-
sion from what preceded. Perhaps too much is invested in the lengthy and
weighty C major fugue at the end of movement six. Although the opening
gesture of movement seven, with its leap from F to E-flat and the gently de-
scending line of the sopranos, clearly recalls movement one, it is not so
much a logical return to that music as it is a sudden resumption of it. Heard
in this way, the connected outer movements form a frame to movements
two through six; they are a musically detached entity, operating in a sepa-
rate sphere. Within this frame, the middle five movements of the Requiem
form a peregrination, an essay in transience, indeed, in the earthly state of
transition and anticipation, and it is in this sense that the work can be re-
lated to contemporaneous apocalypticism.
Various writers have attempted to demonstrate that the succession of keys
in these middle five movements forms a logically directed harmonic progres-
sion from and to F major.25 Indeed, there is some general connotation of di-
rection in moving from the B-flat sphere of movement two toward the C ma-
jor that emerges in a celebratory fugue at the end of movement six. It is,
however, counterproductive to try and trace a direct line between the two.
Rather, the primary keys of the inner movement can all be related individu-
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 81

Movement 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Prim. keys F Bãmin-maj D min-maj Eã G C min-maj F
Sec. keys Gã Eã Få min A
Relation to F iv IV vi VI IV/IV V/V V V

Figure 3.1 Keys of the seven movements in Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45. (Sec-
ondary keys listed here are only those marked by a change of key signature in the
score. All keys are major unless otherwise noted.)

ally more or less closely to F major, as indicated in the bottom row of fig.
3.1. Movements two through six do not progress so much as they wander
within the orbit of F major.
Wandering implies motion, and motion is presented as a musical topos
from the work’s outset (see Appendix, ex. 2), first by the F pedal in the bot-
tom range and shortly thereafter by the overlapping chromatic descents and
suspension-heavy voice leading in bars 3–15. The repeated quarter notes in
the bass provide a temporal background against which the middle strings
spin their dense contrapuntal web. And whereas it might be too facile sim-
ply to translate the steady passage of musical time that is articulated by the
repeated quarter notes as a metaphor for real (i.e., human, historical) time, a
variety of musical and textual details in the orchestral introduction to the
first movement nevertheless point to a symbolic representation of time.26
The second cellos’ unprepared E-flat in bar 2, a dissonant seventh against
the continuing low F, immediately evokes a sense of discontinuity since,
technically, it should proceed from a missing consonant F.27 Thus there is no
clear tonal “beginning” but rather the emergence of something that began
before the beginning of this piece or is in some other way inaudible to us.
As the E-flat descends chromatically in the second cello, overlapping the-
matic entries by the first cellos (bar 3) and violas (bars 5 and 7) begin to pile
up, each spawning a chromatically descending line of its own. Although
repeated thematic entries and descending chromatic lines have the poten-
tial strongly to define and measure a sense of time, the effect here is quite
different. Rather than organizing his material in a rational manner, Brahms
offsets the various melodic elements in these opening bars unpredictably:
any given tone in the descending lines takes on a new harmonic role and is
pitted against a different portion of the thematic statement upon its reap-
pearance. For example, when the second cellos’ initial thematic entry on B-
flat is repeated an octave higher by the first violas in bar 7, it coincides with
a dominant-seventh harmony (sub-posed by the tonic F pedal), not with the
subdominant B-flat harmony over which it appeared in bar 3. Likewise,
when the first violas cadence to A in bar 8, that note is reinterpreted as a sus-
pension as the other parts continue their downward slide to a subdominant
82 Brahms and the German Spirit

harmony (major then minor) in bar 9. While the individual musical compo-
nents used in these bars are familiar, their constant reconfiguration against
one another confuses any sense of direction and progression the opening
passage may possess and the concomitant sense of time they convey.
In his analysis of op. 45, Adolf Schubring states that “already the first
bars leave no doubt that we have a thoroughly modern work before us.”28
Our own late-twentieth-century interpretive stance might allow us to hear
in Brahms’s quasi-imitative texture an air of the antique in these opening
bars, much as the similar-sounding contrapuntal texture among the strings
in the opening of Mendelssohn’s Symphony no. 5 (“Reformation”) are of-
ten taken to evoke Palestrinian counterpoint as a symbol of the Catholic
Church.29 But Schubring was more concerned with vertical elements and
chromatic inflections that were peculiar to mid-nineteenth-century har-
monic language. Especially characteristic is the use of the flatted sixth, D-
flat, which is briefly tonicized in bar 11 (forcing the bass pedal off F for the
first time) to highlight its function within the (German) augmented-sixth
harmony preceding the cadence of bar 12.
If the modernity of these opening bars is relative to the perspective of the
listener, their currency is thrown into stark relief by the choral statement
that follows. When the voices enter with the beatitude of Matthew 5:4, their
a cappella, highly consonant part writing marks them as archaic in contrast
to the preceding orchestral strains. What connects the two otherwise sepa-
rate ideas is the presence of the flatted sixth degree, D-flat, as a constant dis-
sonant element (enharmonically spelled as C-sharp in the choral bass at bars
37–39).30 D-flat is more than local chromatic inflection in movement one,
however; it forms a secondary key area to the tonic F, allowing Brahms to
construct the movement upon a large-scale fluctuation between the keys of F
major and D-flat major (see fig. 3.2). The interplay of those keys provides
Brahms with a means for constructing a symmetrical three-part form, corre-
sponding to the da capo disposition of the text, in which Matthew 5:4 be-
gins and ends the movement. But cutting across such neat formal schemes is
a separate characteristic element, namely, the pulsating pedal figure and
overlapping quasi-imitative counterpoint of the orchestral introduction. As
indicated in fig. 3.2, that material intersects the tripartite, symmetrical struc-
ture of movement one at bars 65–79 and 96–104. In each instance, the re-
sumption of the opening material suggests a new beginning and thus a for-
mal division within the movement. But in both cases, the sense of beginning
merely blurs the formal divisions of the movement and thereby confuses the
listener’s perception of time, that is, the perception of where we are within
the movement vis-à-vis the repetition of earlier material and the return to
the initial key, F major.
With that in mind, it is interesting to note how frequently Brahms begins
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 83

macro-form A B A′

micro-form a A B a′ B′ a″ A′ C (codetta)

1–14 15–46 47–64 65–78 79–95 96–105 106–144 106–144

Text I Text II “Selig

Text I
Matthew 5:4 Ps. 126:5 6a 6a–b Matthew 5:4
sind”

F major F major D major (F major) D major D major F major

INTRO INTRO INTRO

F D-flat F

False beginning implied Formal overlap implied

by return to F major and by return to opening text
introductory material (“selig sind”) and
introductory material

Figure 3.2 Overlapping formal divisions in Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, move-
ment one.

movements off of the tonic or with an awkward rhythmic gesture in the Re-
quiem. Although the beginning of movement two is fairly unremarkable in
this regard, the use of the dominant-note pickup (F to B-flat) does provide
continuity with the preceding (first) movement and thereby raises again the
issue of time and motion. Movement three also begins on the dominant
pitch, A, but fails to establish a clear tonic until the cellos’ C-sharp in bar 7
prepares a cadence to D minor. More important, perhaps, is the vague
rhythmic profile at the outset of this movement (ex. 3.2). Against the piano
octave A’s of the horns, the low strings are unable to provide a clear sense of
meter as they melodically cough up an echo of the descending bass figure
that began movement two, while rhythmically they weakly recall the martial
rhythms that accompanied the initial statement of the fugue-like chorus at
the end of that movement. In fact, there have been no completely satisfying
cadences to a root-position tonic when the entire opening period closes in
bars 102–104 on octave D’s. Potential resting points at bars 16, 33, 48, and
93 are all undercut by some sort of deceptive cadence or dominant pedal.31
Similarly, the off-balance rhythm with which Brahms begins movement five
makes it difficult to hear the bar line in the initial five-beat phrase. Earlier I
posited that the bass line of these bars is offset rhythmically: the initial
G sounds more like a downbeat than the upbeat that is notated. Brahms
presents us with a bass line here that could just as easily be in triple meter,
and is only reined in to the stated common time by the force of the bar lines.
In fact, he would later use this very bass line, in 3/8 meter, as the second
84 Brahms and the German Spirit

      
Baritone    
Herr, leh - re doch mich,
      

 
    

      

   

Example 3.2 Ein deutsches Requiem, movement three: unstable beginning.

theme of movement two from his Fourth Symphony (played by the cellos
from bar 41).32

Movement Six and the Apocalyptic Moment

Independently, the introductions to these movements do not draw attention
to themselves as unstable or problematic. But taken as a whole, they form a
pattern of vague beginnings, another metaphor for wandering, like the undi-
rected harmonic progression that their main keys form. Wandering also im-
plies transience, and transience of various types dominates the text of these
movements: the “withered grass” of movement two; the days of a life that
are but a hand’s breadth in movement three; and the soul that “longs” for
the courts of the Lord in movement four. Of course, the most concrete mani-
festation of wandering in the text of the Requiem occurs at the beginning of
movement six. (The text of that movement is presented as fig. 3.3; bars 1–37
are given as Appendix ex. 3). Following the harmonically unstable undula-
tion between G major and D minor that begins the movement, Brahms
avoids establishing C minor through the first period, implying F minor or a
modally colored G major through bar 16, and he only establishes C minor
through a half cadence to G in bar 32. The “walking” figure in the lower
strings and the meandering harmonic progression paint a picture of search-
ing and impermanence—perhaps the clearest tone painting in the piece.
After this brief epigrammatic passage from Hebrews 13, Brahms em-
ploys the most apocalyptic text in the Requiem, a passage from 1 Corinthi-
ans 15 that is heavily laden with revelatory symbolism and replete with mys-
teries—the last trumpet blast and the resurrection of the dead. Even the
language with which the baritone soloist introduces this new text is revela-
tory: “Siehe, ich sage euch ein Geheimnis.” Continuing on, both the mystery
and transformation referred to in the text are musically depicted by the sud-
denness of the modulation that occurs in bars 28–34, where the soloist ap-
propriates the alto’s languorous G (at pitch) and effects a common-tone
modulation when the high D-flat to which he leaps is tonicized in bar 30,
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 85

Hebrews 13:14
Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt, For here we have no lasting city, but
sondern die zukünftige suchen wir. we are looking for the city that is to come.

1 Corinthians 15: 51–2

Siehe, ich sage euch ein Geheimnis: Listen, I will tell you a mystery!
Wir werden nicht alle entschlafen, wir werden We will not all die, but we will all be
aber alle verwandelt werden; changed,
und dasselbige plötzlich, in einem Augenblick, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
zu der Zeit der letzten Posaune. at the last trumpet.
Denn es wird die Posaune schallen, und die For the trumpet will sound, and the dead
Toten werden auferstehen unverweslich, und will be raised imperishable, and we will be
wir werden verwandelt werden. changed.

1 Corinthians 15: 54–55

Dann wird erfüllet werden das Wort, das Then the saying that is written will be
geschrieben steht: “Der Tod, ist verschlungen fulfilled “Death has been swallowed up in
in den Sieg. Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Hölle, victory.” “Where, O death, is your
wo ist dein Sieg?” victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

Revelation 4:11
Herr, du bist würdig zu nehmen Preis und You are worthy, our Lord and God, to
Ehre und Kraft, denn du hast alle Dinge receive glory and honor and power, for
geschaffen, und durch deinen Willen haben sie you created all things, and by your will
das Wesen und sind geschaffen. they existed and were created.

Figure 3.3 Text and translation of Ein deutsches Requiem, movement six.

only to be reinterpreted as 5$ in the new and distant key of F-sharp minor, in

which the ensuing passage is set.
Figure 3.4 contains a schematic outline of movement six. As opposed to
the lack of direction in the overall Requiem, there is a definite linear pro-
gression through this movement. The musical Verwandlung brought on by
the baritone’s vision produces a harmonic instability, F-sharp minor, that
serves as a mere transitory station and provides kinetic impetus toward the
establishment of the elusive tonic, C minor. Brahms reaches the remote in-
termediate key through the enharmonic modulation at bar 30, just men-
tioned. Enharmonicism here may be understood as a musical symbol of
Geheimnis. Consequently, Brahms requires a similarly sudden musical tran-
sition to C minor in bars 67–76, which introduce the initial exposition of
the chorus’s vivace music. With the chorus answering in stark unison, the
baritone now resolves C-sharp up to D, beginning a three-step sequential as-
cent to an E-flat-based harmony which resolves to C by bar 82 (ex. 3.3).33
The shifting harmonies are carried by the trombones and tuba, which au-
rally evoke the apocalyptic moment by their first appearance since move-
ment three. Brahms arrests the sequence in bar 75 by sub-posing a low G,
86 Brahms and the German Spirit

Andante accel. Vivace

Bars
1–28 28–33 33–67 68–81 82–107 108–127 128–207 208–349

Denn wir Siehe, ich Wir zu der Denn es dann Der Tod ist Herr du
Text haben hie sage euch werden Zeit wird die wird verschlung- bist würdig
incipit (Chorus) (Baritone) nicht alle (Baritone/ Posaune erfüllet en (Fugue)
(Baritone/ chorus) (Chorus) werden
chorus)
Key (C minor)–V (Dã = Cå) → Få minor mod. C minor (Dã) → C minor C major

UNSTABLE → → (ARRIVAL) → ARRIVAL

stable // trans.
(but
distant)

Figure 3.4 Schematic outline of Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, movement six.

thereby returning to the very harmony, a first-inversion E-flat major chord,

with which he began the Geheimnis music back in bar 29. Just as that earlier
E-flat had resulted from an unexpected pivot over a timpani roll on G, the
return to a G harmony in bar 76 does not grow logically out of the preced-
ing sequence but rather dissolves that material and, by extension, all of the
intervening F-sharp minor revelatory music. The net effect is to release a tor-
rent of the pent-up dominant capacity of G, thereby strongly pushing the
movement forward toward the long-awaited arrival of C minor with the
choral entrance at bar 82. By the time the solo baritone returns in bar 109 to
complete the prophecy, there is no looking back.
The baritone serves a prophetic function textually and a catalytic function
musically; that is, the soloist heralds the mysteries of Scripture as he pro-
vides modulatory musical bridges between more stable choral episodes. Ear-
lier, I posited that the sixth movement of the Requiem is progressive and
harmonically directed toward its conclusion, unlike the piece as a whole.
The same is true to a lesser degree in two other movements in the Requiem,
the second and third, the other large movements that also begin relatively
slowly in a minor key and end with a faster tempo, in the parallel major key,
and with fugue-like material. Compared to these, the sixth movement seems
to form an apex, an apotheosis of those progressively directed movements
and of the general sense of wandering across all five of the inner movements
in the piece. Indeed, its structure is tighter, more urgent than in the previous
movements. Nowhere is that difference more tangible than in the soloist’s
final entrance, “dann wird erfüllet, das Wort das geschrieben steht,” where
the previously mysterious E-flat harmony and leap to D-flat sound breath-
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 87

C# D
           
 
67 fp


cresc.

Trombs 

+Tuba fp

             
cresc. poco a poco

zu der Zeit der letz - ten Po - sau - ne


Sop.
Alto

     
 
 





  
 
zu der Zeit der letz - ten Po -

  zu der
 
Ten.
Bass        

Eb
           
ff
72

   
f cresc.
Timp.
sau - - ne, der
 
        ff

       
letz - ten Po - sau - - ne

  Zeit der
    letz - ten, der
     

  
       ff
zu der Zeit der

Example 3.3 Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, movement six: three-step sequential ascent to C
minor.

less. Now the mysterious D-flat is immediately “swallowed up” in a more

logical (and hence directed) harmonic progression, in which D-flat descends
to C and then B natural, preparing an immediate return of G as a dominant
harmony in bars 118–122.
While the baritone’s repeated motive (G–Bã–Eã–Dã) registers important
structural moments throughout the movement, it also works along with his
text to propel the musical material forward through an underlying rising
pitch pattern. As noted earlier, the initial statement of this motive in bars
28–32 highlights the ambiguous role of D-flat/C-sharp. Brahms then “re-
solves” that pitch upward through the ascending sequence in bars 67–73.
At first hearing it would sound as if D-flat resolves downward to C when
88 Brahms and the German Spirit

C# D

              

122

    


Winds
       
             
      

Sop     
Alto  
          
Sieg. Tod, wo ist dein Sta - chel! Tod,
              
Ten.
Bass 
     
             
                               
     
Strings  
 
                         

Eb E§

    
128
                    
    
                 
    
S.   
        
      
Tod,
   
wo ist dein Sta - chel!
   
Höl - - le.

wo ist dein Sieg,
   

B.   
           
ist dein
  
                            
 
 

                                     

Example 3.4 Ein deutsches Requiem, op. 45, movement six, bars 122–133: chromatic octave
ascent in choir from C-sharp to E.

the motive recurs, beginning in bar 108, specifically in bars 116–117. But
Brahms has not finished with D-flat. An arresting and tonally perturbing
passage intrudes at bars 122–133 (ex. 3.4) in which the choir moves upward
chromatically in octaves on the word “Tod” (interspersed with part writing
on the words “wo ist dein Stachel”) from C-sharp to E-flat, before crowning
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 89

its ascent by arriving on E natural at the word “Hölle” in bar 159. What we
hear in this passage is a rough, more guttural rendition of the transitional se-
quence from bar 67. Even here, then, after the baritone has completed his
solo, the motor of his repeated motive is still driving the music forward.
Only now the chromatic ascent is carried as far as E natural, thus “trans-
forming” the critical third-scale degree (E) in the process of moving from C
minor to C major.
Fulfillment is the baritone’s goal: fulfillment of “das Wort, das
geschrieben steht.” Only then (“dann wird erfüllet”) will victory be
achieved (“Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg”). Fulfillment may be more
than a localized concern, however. The baritone’s motive here repeats the
arpeggiated triad with which he entered in bar 28 (“Siehe ich sage euch
ein Geheimnis; ex. 3.5A). It may thus also provide a connection to previ-
ous movements and cements the vague sense of progress from B-flat in
movement two through C in movement six that I mentioned earlier. Similar
instances of this motive occur in movement two as the theme of the fugal
conclusion beginning in bar 206 (ex. 3.5B), and in movement five in bars
27–29, at a brief transition sung by the soprano soloist (ex. 3.5C). An
arpeggiation of a major chord hardly constitutes a relationship among mo-
tives, but there are other striking similarities connecting these moments as
well. Most noticeably, all three instances share a remarkably similar rhyth-
mic profile and are accompanied by a relatively thin orchestral texture (es-
pecially in movements five and six). And all three instances of the motive
occur at transitional junctures in their respective movements: its initial ap-
pearance in movement two completes a sudden transition from B-flat minor
to B-flat major and initiates the lengthy choral section that concludes the
movement; in movement five the motive ends on B-flat, but now effecting a
common-tone modulation from D major; and, as we have just seen, it sud-
denly introduces the F-sharp minor episode in movement six, also by a com-
mon-tone modulation.
Donald Francis Tovey recognized the similarity of these motives in his
analysis of op. 45 but dismissed them as coincidental. Their dissimilar texts,
Tovey argued, provided no context in which to hear them as related, and
therefore rendered any motivic congruity happenstance.34 Yet there is, in
fact, a textual connection across these instances; each sets or is somehow
connected to a prophetic announcement. While this is readily apparent from
the signal words “sehet” and “siehe” in movements five and six, it pertains
to movement two as well (though less obviously). The passage from Isaiah
35 that Brahms uses there, announcing the coming of the Lord’s ransomed,
closes thirteen chapters (23–35) of the “Oracle concerning Sidon” which
include the so-called “Isaiah Apocalypse.” Like the later chapters of the
book, which Brahms marked extensively in his own copy of the Bible, it
shares an apocalyptic tone of Israel redeemed, Zion returned, and thus
90 Brahms and the German Spirit

                   
28


Sie - he ich sa - ge euch ein Ge - heim - - - - nis:


      
206


Die er - lö - se - ten des Herrn

             
27

 
Se - het mich an: ich ha - be ei - ne klei - ne Zeit

Example 3.5 Baritone’s “revelatory” motive in Ein deutsches Requiem. op. 45: (A) movement
six, bars 28–32; (B) movement two, bars 206–208; (C) movement five, bars 27–29.

serves a prefiguratory function for Brahms, as an Old Testament signpost

toward the final redemption, and the end of time signaled by the C minor
music of the last trumpet call in movement six.35
A further and ultimately more telling connection lies in the relationship
between that portion of Isaiah and the exact content of the baritone’s sec-
ond entrance in movement six. Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 15 of “das
Wort, das geschrieben steht,” namely, the promise that death will be swal-
lowed up in victory. Specifically, those words are written in the “Isaiah
Apocalypse,” 25:7, “He [The Lord] will swallow up death forever.” Note
also that Brahms introduces the fugal chorus at the end of movement two
with these words from 1 Peter: “Aber das Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit”
(But the Lord’s Word remains in eternity). There are myriad ways to under-
stood “the Lord’s Word” in purely Christian or generally religious terms.
But given the context in which Brahms is composing his Requiem, and given
his comments to Reinthaler concerning its text, I believe “das Wort” con-
notes something else here. In a piece that articulates wandering and search-
ing, and resolves these by extolling the permanence of the Word and, in the
final movement, the permanence of our works, “the Word” carries at least
some of the meaning that language held for the Romantics. And here we are
speaking strongly of the German language.
Redemption is followed by rejoicing in the form of the mighty fugue that
concludes movement six.36 (And for what it is worth, Brahms chooses this
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 91

moment to introduce texts from the apocalyptic Revelation for the remain-
der of the piece.) Brahms imbues this fugue with a great sense of finality. On
the musical side, in moving from C minor to C major, he taps a by then fa-
miliar gambit from the symphonic canon. Beethoven’s Fifth, with its famous
C major “breakthrough” at the end, had become a well-worn model for
ending a symphony (or other large-scale instrumental work), a tradition
that Brahms would later revisit in his First Symphony. Even more final
sounding here is the text. Unlike in the two earlier movements that ended
with large fugue-like sections (movements two and three), the text at the end
of the sixth movement has no direct connection to what precedes it but
rather provides an utterly generic hymn of praise to the Lord. Not only does
this textual disposition further distinguish the role of movement six from
that of the other “wandering” movements in the middle of the piece, but
also it offers a formula for comparing this movement with movements two
and three, one that does not founder on the dubious attempt to evince sym-
metry between one movement and a pair of movements, as most symmetri-
cal interpretations of the piece must.
The choral fugue at the end of movement six is best heard as a synthesis
of those earlier concluding choruses. Textually, its generic character en-
compasses both of the earlier paeans: the “ransomed of the Lord” (“die
Erlöseten des Herrn”) and the “souls of the righteous” (“die Gerechten
Seelen”) fall now within the larger category of “all created things” (“alle
Dinge geschaffen”) for which the Lord is to be praised. Musically, the bow
to baroque style is more pronounced here than in either of the earlier con-
cluding choruses. Not only does the chorus begin as a legitimate fugue (as at
the end of movement three), but also the use of cut time and a running bass
line and countersubject (bars 213, 217, etc.) evoke an eighteenth-century
stile antico more clearly than at any point since the choir’s initial entry in
movement one (though there is also much in the harmony and the orchestra-
tion here to remind us that this is a product of mid-nineteenth-century Ger-
man musical style).
If this is a synthesis of the conclusions to the other two large-scale bifur-
cated movements in the piece, it is also a musical fulfillment to equal the
baritone’s promise. One could draw that conclusion merely from the size
and grandeur of it all: 140 bars of nearly continuous four-voice counter-
point; a thick accompaniment from a large orchestra; swelling twice to for-
tissimo half cadences on the word “Kraft”; and so on. But the sense of
fulfillment here lies also in the array of fugal tonal relationships in which
Brahms places the subject entries. Only in the initial exposition are the four
voices disposed in the textbook manner, entering alternately on C and G.
The next set of entrances (bars 224–232) also begin on C and G (alto and
soprano) but pile up more quickly (first in two-bar then in one-bar intervals)
92 Brahms and the German Spirit

and soon shift to entries on D and G, beginning in bar 226, as part of a tran-
sition to G minor. Later in the fugue, Brahms explores all manner of pitch
and durational intervals between entrances: thirds one bar apart in (271–
275); fourths one bar apart (304–307), and seconds a half bar apart (333–
334). Significantly, however, Brahms does not employ any technical devices
(augmentation, inversion). He had certainly learned to execute those sorts
of contrapuntal maneuvers in his counterpoint studies of the late 1850s, as a
few short published choral works and fugues of the previous decade had
borne out.37 But the mood of this fugue is too bright, its praise too direct to
allow for such artful distractions; these are the Last Days, the transition be-
tween an earthly time-bound existence and a divine eternity. The specificity
of the preceding texts—their calls for comfort, their questioning of life’s
purpose, their promise of redemption—have been superseded by blanket ex-
altation and affirmation of the Lord.
We might also understand the lack of artificial compositional procedures
here as directly related to the C major tonality of the fugue. Earlier I identi-
fied the shift from C minor to C major as a trope that can be traced back to
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Certainly with the reception of that piece, if
not earlier, that modal shift had been associated with the spiritual side of
Romanticism. E. T. A Hoffmann put it most famously in his 1810 review of
Beethoven’s symphony: “It is like a radiant blinding sunlight which sud-
denly illuminates the dark night.”38 In movement six of Ein deutsches Re-
quiem, this effect occurs in spectacular fashion a little before the notated key
change, namely, at the drawn-out fortissimo statements on “wo (ist dein
Sieg)” at bars 192–204. Brahms interprets the sopranos’ A-flat three sepa-
rate ways in those bars: as the third in an F minor harmony (iv in C minor);
as the fifth in a D-flat, Neapolitan-sixth harmony; and, respelled as G-sharp,
as the third of an E dominant harmony that leads to A natural in bar 201
over an A minor harmony. With this last chord, the relative minor of C ma-
jor, we have shifted to C major, and the cadence before the double bar
spreads that sonority throughout the entire performing ensemble.
When the altos emerge from this wall of sound at bar 208 (accompanied
by the running quarter notes of the violins), the radiance they project is a
matter not merely of the modal shift to C major but also of volume, texture,
and harmonic clarity. Everything about this fugal entrance suggests purity
and light, a cleansing of what preceded, and a glimpse into “the realm of the
colossal and the immeasurable” (to quote yet another famous phrase from
Hoffmann’s Beethoven review).39 All the fugal expositions and episodic ma-
terial that follow are refractions of that pure light, reflections of the glimpse
into the infinite that is afforded by the initial exposition. And whereas
changing the time and pitch intervals of the entrances alters the later exposi-
tions enough to differentiate them from their pure model, it also preserves
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 93

the model in a way that augmentations, inversions, and the like would not.
Even the arresting fortissimo half cadences that threaten to pull the music
strongly out of C major (D major at bars 289–290; E major at bars 215–
216) are immediately assuaged by returns to C major.
Interwoven with those later expositions and pronounced half cadences
are myriad developments of a rising motive from the fugal theme itself at the
words “zu nehmen Preis (und Ehre und Kraft)” in bars 209–210, and of a
secondary theme from the setting of the words “denn du hast alle Dinge
erschaffen.” Although the latter theme is slightly more pronounced in the
choir’s material, it is the “zu nehmen Preis” motive that provides the most
climactic element in the chorus. Brahms approaches each of the fortissimo
half cadences with a seemingly limitless extension of the ascending figure,
beginning first in bar 282 (leading to the half cadence on D in bar 289) and
then in bar 309 (leading to the half cadence on E in bar 315). He carefully
worked out the second of these passages within a continuity draft of bars
290 to the end of the movement on a sketch sheet that also contains sketches
for the middle of movement seven.40 Although the main material of this
draft would appear to be the basic two-part contrapuntal framework for
the various sections at the end of the movement, Brahms devotes particular
attention to the extended rising motive beginning in bar 309, where the
counterpoint of the voices disappears and only the continuous rising instru-
mental line (which is eventually joined by the chorus in bars 311–313) is
notated.
The C major fugue at the end of movement six marks the apocalyptic mo-
ment in Ein deutsches Requiem. It belongs neither to earthbound time nor
to divine eternity; it is the pure state of transition between the two. The fu-
gal texture here completes the suspension of time that the opening strains of
the piece had implied. (And perhaps it was for this reason that Brahms
abandoned the fugue of movement two so quickly and undercut the fugal
texture at the end of movement three with the pounding quarter-note pedal
of the timpani—it was too soon to evoke the full-fledged fugue at that point,
too soon for the apocalyptic moment.) Now, at the end of movement six, it
is not a sense of temporal dislocation as it was at the beginning of movement
one, but rather a wiping away of time in a manner that only a fugue can
achieve. Unlike most musical types, fugues are processes, not forms. Thus,
unlike sonatas, binary dance movements, and the like, fugues have no desig-
nated arrival point, no telltale formal construct that signals the coming of
the end. The larger tonic-dominant polarity that governs the whole of other
instrumental types is encapsulated in the integral parts of a fugue, the pair-
ings of voices against each other on tonic and dominant statements of the
subject and answer. Perhaps it is not coincidental that Brahms chose to use a
text from Revelation for this moment in the piece (he certainly could have
94 Brahms and the German Spirit

found so generic an encomium at various other points in the Bible). Or per-

haps it does not matter where the words come from; Brahms is, after all, ex-
pressing not the Christian apocalypse but rather a deep sense of arrival that
was part of the German national spirit in the years leading up to 1871. The
resplendent C major fugue at the end of movement six in Ein deutsches Re-
quiem expresses that feeling of arrival better than any of the patriotic works
written in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War would be able to—in-
cluding Brahms’s own Triumphlied.

An Apocalyptic Ending
What lies beyond time, in theological terms, is the Everlasting Gospel, the
Age of Felicity, God’s Kingdom on Earth; there lies rest from our labors,
blessing, and comfort. It is not the business of Ein deutsches Requiem to
achieve that state (and certainly not the business of its five inner move-
ments), only to approach it. For that is all apocalypticism was capable of:
anticipation. Thus, comfort is not the subject of movement six. Rather, the
baritone promises to show us mysteries, and he prophesies that the Word
shall be fulfilled. Comfort remains a plea and a promise, and so it is primar-
ily the business of the two outer movements to articulate a vision of how the
promise shall be fulfilled. By inference, then, it is the fulfillment of the Word
that bestows comfort. A case could be made for a purely Christian, theologi-
cal interpretation of fulfillment here (“Selig sind die Toten, die in dem Herrn
sterben”), except that Brahms pointedly disavowed such meaning in his re-
ply to Reinthaler. By his own account, he cited the quotation from Revela-
tion as a mater of poetic necessity rather than Christian faith: “I have taken
much liberty because I am a musician, because I had use for it, because I
couldn’t argue away or erase a ‘henceforth’ from my venerable poets.” Lan-
guage, then, is what endures von nun an. Luther’s German language is tran-
scendent and lifted to the status of Ewigkeit.
Brahms articulates these lofty sentiments through his transformation of
the first movement into the seventh. The connection between these outer
movements derives at least as strongly from their texts as it does through a
series of explicit musical references. Syntactical parallels between the open-
ing texts of the two movements create an overarching framework for the
promise of comfort in op. 45:

Movement one
Matthew 5:4 Selig sind,
die da Leid tragen,
denn sie sollen getröstet werden
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 95

Movement seven
Revelations 14:13 Selig sind die Toten,
die in dem Herrn sterben,
...
denn ihre Werken folgen ihnen nach.

Brahms draws particular attention to these syntactical similarities at either

end of the Requiem by closely relating the musical setting of each passage.
The seventh movement, the only one after the first movement in F major,
commences with the same low F1 in the double basses that opened the piece
and proceeds immediately up to a dissonant seventh (Eã3) in the cellos,
thereby echoing a similar gesture in bars 1–2 of movement one. This orches-
tral reminiscence at the beginning of movement seven underpins the sopra-
nos’ simultaneous vocal recollection of the melodic material that ended the
first movement. Brahms completes the reference by recapitulating the entire
codetta from movement one (bars 144–158) at the end of the piece (move-
ment seven, bars 151–166).
Notably, Brahms begins the last movement not with material from the
opening of the first but rather with a transformation of the closing material
from movement one, further enhancing the sense that this is a continuation
of, rather than a return to, that movement. What remains of the Requiem’s
opening at the beginning of the last movement is a radiant version of the
orchestral introduction: the plodding quarter notes have been transformed
into lilting eighth notes; the descending line from the flatted seventh, E-flat,
has been rendered diatonic; violins have been added to the ensemble
to brighten its timbre significantly: all in accordance with the designation
“Feierlich,” meaning “solemn, festive, or celebrative.” The timeless realm
that was merely alluded to in dark tones in the first movement is now de-
picted in brilliant tones at the end of the piece.
One manner in which the final movement builds on the first is in its dislo-
cating sense of time and progress. Again, the similarities are clear, if some-
what less immediately noticeable. As he did the first movement, Brahms laid
out the last in a broad tripartite scheme with a mediant relationship (now
the parallel-major mediant, A major) as a central foil to F major at either
end of the movement. And once again, most of the obvious juncture points
in the movement’s structure are marked by relatively sudden modulations or
by no modulation at all. So, for example, the unexpected shift from F major
to D-flat major in bar 47 of the first movement is matched by the sudden re-
appearance of F major from A major at bar 102 of the last. Absent in move-
ment seven, however, are the thematic referents that turned up in unpredict-
able relationships among themselves to confuse the sense of time and formal
96 Brahms and the German Spirit

progress in movement one. There is disjuncture to be sure in the last move-

ment, but of a different nature and quality, and one that could easily be la-
beled “apocalyptic.” Long phrases, and in some cases large sections within
this movement, progress determinedly to nowhere: that is, they are abruptly
cut off by material from somewhere else in the movement (or from the first
movement) in a new and startling key, so that the juxtaposed bits of mate-
rial stand in a practically random relationship to one another. By extension,
the sense of progression and order is nearly negated; this is as close as one
can come to a sense of simultaneity in musical form without actually super-
imposing disparate elements one atop the other.
The first strong instance of this effect comes with the aforementioned re-
turn of F major in bar 102. Brahms has just completed a well-rounded pe-
riod in A major in bars 48–101 (replete with a modulation to the dominant,
E major, in bars 58–83), and suggests a large-scale structural cadence on A
when the opening material of the movement, in the home key of F major,
breaks in unexpectedly at bar 102. Unlike the sudden shifts of key that oc-
curred in the opening movement (to D-flat in bar 47, and to F at bar 102),
the reprise of the opening is so nearly literal here as to practically negate the
material that came before; the path on which that musical material was
headed vanishes and the preceding material is there again as if we had never
left it. Brahms achieves a nearly identical effect with the two abrupt (one-
bar) crescendo modulations in bars 131–132 and 140–141, the first from F
to E-flat major, the second from E-flat to A-flat major, which in turn slips to
D-flat major by the next bar, 143. Both the keys of E-flat in bar 132 and D-
flat in bar 143 bring with them more (and more literal) echoes of the first
movement. E-flat draws the original rendition of the closing theme from
movement one (bars 106–110) with which the sopranos began the current
movement; and D-flat recalls the subsequent quote within movement one it-
self (bars 111–112) of the opening choral entrance in the piece.
Abrupt shifts like these are typical of biblical apocalyptic writing, as are
allusions to destruction and renewal. In the Bible, this type of imagery usu-
ally describes the sudden appearance of a new world from the destruction of
the old world.41 To quote Abrams once again, “The line of change in Chris-
tian history is right-angled: the key events are abrupt, cataclysmic, and
make a drastic, even an absolute difference.”42 The concluding chorus of
movement six and all of the Feierlich movement seven could be heard as the
“appearance of a new world” out of the “cataclysm, or the “destruction of
the old world” in the middle of movement six. And the kaleidoscopic tem-
poral effect of constantly breaking in with earlier material in movement
seven might be likened to the timelessness of that new world. Again, this res-
onates with the sensation of transition that was epitomized at the end of the
sixth movement, and which is so central to apocalyptic thinking in Western
 Ein deutsches Requiem and the Apocalyptic Paradigm 97

history. This, according to Kermode, is “what Yeats called ‘antithetical mul-

tiform influx’—the forms assumed by the inrushing gyre as the old one
reaches its term. The dialectic of Yeats’ gyres is simple enough in essence;
they are a figure for the co-existence of the past and the future at the time of
transition. The old narrows to its apex, the new broadens towards its base,
and the old and the new interpenetrate.”43
The apocalyptic character of Ein deutsches Requiem is largely a function
of how Brahms treats temporality in the work and, narrowly, of how he sep-
arates the linear time(s) of the five inner movements from the timelessness of
the outer ones, all the while creating references between these two separate
realms, thus allowing the glimpses of the outer movements from within the
inner ones to be seen as our worldly, human, and imperfect vision of a time-
less world we cannot grasp. Brahms’s apocalyptic impulse is nationalistic on
several counts. First, through the disposition of biblical texts he grants lan-
guage, das Wort, special eternal status, over and above the potential reli-
gious interpretation of eternity in the piece. And he willfully (and in some
sense consciously) overturns the Latin language normally associated with
a “Requiem,” replacing it with passages from the ur-document of German
literature, Luther’s Bible. Second, he composed the Requiem during years
(1866–1868) in which Prussia’s military campaigns were viewed in Ger-
many as events that were “abrupt, cataclysmic, and [made] a drastic, even
an absolute, difference.”44 The tendency of Germans to foresee the coming
of a new Reich in millennial, apocalyptic terms provides a useful frame-
work for understanding the distinctive features of this German Requiem—
of “ein” deutsches Requiem—a title that implies there are other types of
German Requiems one might compose, but this one provides a particular,
perhaps a singular, point of view, one that is true to the apocalyptic outlook
of Brahms’s Germany.
 C H A
4 P T E R

The Triumphlied, Op. 55,

and the Apocalyptic Moment

Brahms’s Anomalies
When Brahms completed the fifth movement of his Requiem in the summer
of 1868, he was “home” at his father’s house in Hamburg. Up until this
time, he had been residing in Vienna during the winter, but he had not yet
permanently settled in the Austrian capital. In the fall of 1869, several
months after the first performance of the now seven-movement Requiem
at Leipzig, Brahms rented an apartment in Vienna for the first time.1 It
would be over two years, however, before he would permanently settle into
rooms at Karlgasse 4, which he called home for over twenty-five years,
from December 1871 until his death. Thanks to two sets of photographs
made by his friends, we have a relatively vivid record of how Brahms deco-
rated his dwelling.2 One of these is preserved near the end of Viktor von
Miller zu Aichholz’s Brahms-Bilderbuch (1905), which devotes twenty-two
pages to images first of the exterior and then the interior of Brahms’s apart-
ment.3
Readers familiar with Brahms literature from the past hundred years
know the two frequently reproduced photographs of these rooms. First and
most familiar is the long wall in the music room, with its bust of Beethoven,
bronze relief of Bismarck, Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, and Ingres’s portrait
of Cherubini. It is easy to interpret each of the cultural symbols assembled
here by Brahms with our modern understanding of who he was and what
his music means to us: the Beethoven bust hardly requires comment; the Bis-
marck relief reminds us of Brahms’s well-documented patriotism and admi-
ration for the Iron Chancellor; the Sistine Madonna reflects his classicizing
bent as well as his fondness for all forms of Renaissance art; and the portrait
of Cherubini resonates with Brahms’s own prediction (however mistaken)
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 99

that his place in music history would be similar to that of Cherubini—a

craftsman-like preserver of the style he inherited from his immediate prede-
cessors. Not visible in this photograph are the prints of other famous works
of art on the other walls of the room, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa. Aichholz also presents images from Brahms’s bedroom, where more
artworks were found on the walls, most notably the print of the Rohrbach
Bach portrait, reemphasizing Brahms’s penchant for surrounding himself
with images of ancient masters or their products.
All the images in these two rooms depict individuals, and they speak
to Brahms’s personal identification with either the historical figures repre-
sented (Bismarck, Beethoven, Bach) or an artist of historical import (Leo-
nardo, Raphael). Only Barthel von der Helst’s Friedensschluss zu Münster,
in the middle of his bedroom wall, moves beyond the realm of the personal
through its depiction of the accord that ended the Thirty Years’ War in
1648. But even here, Helst’s realism conveys an intimacy that is in keeping
with the individualistic bent of the other objects hanging on the walls in
Brahms’s living quarters (while recalling the most momentous German war
to precede the events of 1871).
A separate set of circumstances govern Aichholz’s photographs of the last
room in the apartment, a private library whose space was made available
when Brahms took over a third room in 1877.4 Perhaps as familiar as the
image of the long living room wall is a picture of this library, complete with
Brahms’s standing desk and sitting area. The collection of books and scores
seen here speaks to Brahms’s love of literature, both verbal and musical. He
is reported to have been extremely well read in historical literature, both
German and foreign (though always in German translation) and in books
on more recent political history.
This is the end of the tour. Yet Aichholz provides one last picture of
Brahms’s dwelling, this of the outside wall of the library. Unlike all of the
other photographs of the apartment, this final picture seems relatively bar-
ren. There are no musical references, none of the mass-produced copies of
famous portraiture (the Mona Lisa, Rohrbach’s Bach), none of the coffee
and tobacco paraphernalia (of which Brahms was so fond) that occupy all
of the other interior photographs: merely a static picture between two win-
dows and some piled-up suitcases. This, then, would appear to be an incon-
gruous end to the tour.5 The particular picture in question also might seem
inappropriate as a conclusion; it is an inexpensive reproduction of a popular
image of the time, Peter Cornelius’s “Apokalyptischen Reiter” (The Riders
of the Apocalypse; fig. 4.1). Cornelius’s chalk drawing is, as the title sug-
gests, a detailed depiction of a violent scene from chapter 6 of Revelation,
namely, the unleashing of the Four Horsemen upon the earth.
100 Brahms and the German Spirit

Figure 4.1 Peter Cornelius, “Die Apokalyptischen Reiter.”

Revelation 6:
1Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of

the four living creatures say, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!”

2And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow; and a crown
was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
3When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say,
“Come!”
4And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace

from the earth, so that men should slay one another; and he was given a great
sword.
5When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a balance in his hand;
6and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures

saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a
denarius; but do not harm oil and wine!”
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 101

7When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature

say, “Come!”
8And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and
Hades followed him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to
kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the
earth.

Such bellicose, apocalyptic imagery seems a strange place to end the picto-
rial review of Johannes Brahms’s life that occupies Aichholz’s book. Yet this
picture clearly had significance for Brahms. After all, he granted it a place of
honor: apparently the only artwork on the walls of his beloved Bibliothek.6
It is not known when Brahms acquired his print of the “Riders of the Apoc-
alypse.” Julius Thäter’s popular engraving was produced in 1849 and the
same artist’s “considerably improved” version became available in 1863.7 In
any event, it seems likely that Brahms would have waited until he moved
into his more permanent lodgings in 1871 before acquiring wall art such as
the Cornelius print or other, larger pieces in the other rooms.
Cornelius’s image resonates with one of Brahms’s most problematic works,
the Triumphlied, op. 55 of 1871. This is one of Brahms’s largest musical
conceptions, based on selected texts from Revelation 19, and scored for
double chorus, orchestra, and baritone soloist. Brahms wrote the piece in
celebration of the Prussian military victory over France in 1870 that ushered
in the new German Empire of Wilhelm I the following year. And although it
is nowadays labeled an “occasional” work, its popularity continued beyond
the war’s immediate aftermath, lasting until the end of Brahms’s life.8 Just as
Cornelius’s “Riders of the Apocalypse” may seem out of place in Brahms’s
library, the Triumphlied similarly seems to be an anomaly amid his output
according to the attributes we normally assign to Brahms’s music. It has
been described as loud, bombastic, and relatively lacking in the sort of re-
finement and contrapuntal detail we usually expect from Brahms.
Brahms’s contemporaries recognized a “monumental” character in
op. 55, as evidenced by the frequent use of the words “Gewalt,” “Kraft,”
“Macht,” and, indeed, “Monumental” in reviews of the first performances.
The widely reported powerful effect of the Triumphlied derives from a di-
rectness and simplicity of expression. As Herman Kretzschmar, who pub-
lished the only contemporaneous critique of the score, asserts, “In this work
the most grandiose effects are achieved through the simplest means.”9 Some
early reviewers observed that these were unusual qualities in Brahms’s music
up to that time. Already Brahms was noted for the subtlety and contrapun-
tal intricacies of works such as the Requiem, the F Minor Piano Quintet,
op. 34, and the Handel Variations, op. 24. Most of these writers were able
to accommodate the Triumphlied as a logical means of expressing the exu-
berance of the national moment. To them, this was a Handelian style in a
102 Brahms and the German Spirit

composer who up until that time had displayed more of a Bachian bent.
That was a significant distinction for nineteenth-century German music crit-
ics, who tended to regard the music of Bach and Handel in a complementary
sociological relationship: Handel as a populist composer for the masses and
Bach as an elite composer for the connoisseur. Although modern commenta-
tors often adduce Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum (which Brahms had con-
ducted in Vienna in 1871) as an inspiration for the Triumphlied, contempo-
raneous critics were referring more generally to the frequent homorhythmic
writing within each chorus and the clarity such vocal writing grants the text.
To his contemporaries, then, the Triumphlied was singular among Brahms’s
works for its forceful clarity and populist tone. To modern audiences, how-
ever, the Triumphlied stands out among his many works for chorus and or-
chestra merely for its lack of familiarity. (Friedhelm Krummacher rightly re-
marks that the negative reception of the Triumphlied has received more
attention than the piece itself.)10 This work has not simply been overlooked
during the past half century or more; it has been actively avoided, even dis-
dained. Reasons for its fall from grace are not mysterious. Already by the
First World War, any massive work, such as this one, that celebrated the
German Empire found little sympathy outside Germany. And even there the
euphoric tone of the work rang hollow after Germany’s defeat in 1918.
With the rise in the 1930s of Adolf Hitler, and with the National Socialists’
preference for Wagner and Bruckner over Brahms, the Triumphlied was
both musically and ideologically unwelcome just about everywhere for the
remainder of the twentieth century.11
Accordingly, the work received no serious scholarship during the twenti-
eth century until a lengthy essay by Friedhelm Krummacher appeared in
1995.12 But Krummacher raised the specter of the Triumphlied only to deny
the militaristic patriotic bent that other writers ascribed to Brahms on ac-
count of the piece. In other words, he sought to strip op. 55 of its real histor-
ical value, as an anomaly within our perception of Brahms as a liberal and
our reception of his music as politically neutral. Instead, Krummacher finds
in the work, and in Brahms’s attitude toward it, an ironic, distanced, and
ambivalent stance vis-à-vis the events of 1871 and even the new Reich. He
thereby reinforces the idea that the militaristic, patriotic side of Brahms
never truly existed in the first place, and that earlier readings of the work as
a genuine patriotic expression (especially Max Kalbeck’s in his Brahms bi-
ography) are colored by the nationalist enthusiasms of those writers, not
Brahms’s own.13
To bolster his revisionist stance, Krummacher takes aim at one of the
most characteristic anecdotes in the reception of the Triumphlied: Brahms’s
supposed musical allusion in the first movement to the second half-verse
of Revelation 19:2, “He has judged the great whore who corrupted the
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 103

  
Winds

      
    

70
 
         

(Das er die gro - ße Hü - re ver - ur - teil - let hat)

            
          
 
            

   
Choirs 1+2 wahr - haf - tig, wahr - haf - tig und ge - recht.

   

            

Example 4.1 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement one: possible allusion to Revelation 19:2. Text
that Brahms entered in pencil into his Handexemplar (“daß er die große Hure verurtheilet hat”)
in parentheses.

earth with her fornication” (“deß er die große Hure verurtheilet hat”).
Kalbeck had claimed in his biography that the wind theme in bars 70–74
fit the unsung (German) text “note for note,” an intentional “Witz,” ac-
cording to Brahms’s friend Bernhard Scholz (ex. 4.1).14 We need not rely
only on Scholz’s word, however; Brahms copied the questionable verse into
his Handexemplar beneath this theme in the score. Whether or not he had
these words in mind when he conceived the piece, Brahms verifies Kalbeck’s
claim that these words should figure into a complete understanding of the
work despite their absence from the printed score. And Kalbeck makes it
clear to whom he thinks the “great whore” would refer in Brahms’s allu-
sion. Reflecting on the apocalyptic presage of Revelation 19, he writes,
“What the angels in heaven would one day sing over the fall of Babylon as a
‘Triumphlied of the elect,’ that can also be sung after so many thousands
of years by the elect who have witnessed the fall of the modern ‘Babylon on
the Seine.’”15
Much as nineteenth-century Germans longed for national unification on
its own merits, to achieve that goal at the expense of France carried special
mythical meaning. As countless historians have suggested, the German na-
tionalist movement might never have gained its sustaining momentum
without France as a hated foil against which to strive. German Romantics
had been roused to political awareness by the Napoleonic domination of
German-speaking lands and their sense that the laudable principles of the
French Revolution had been betrayed. France was seen not only as a dec-
104 Brahms and the German Spirit

adent nation but also as an aggressive roadblock to German nationhood. At

stake was nothing less than a resurrection of the medieval Germanic Empire
under Frederick Barbarossa, and this could be achieved only by vanquish-
ing the Latin demon: then Rome, now France. From the beginning, the bat-
tle against French influence (cultural, political, and otherwise) was pitched
in implicitly or explicitly religious terms. France was portrayed as “Baby-
lon” in opposition to Germany’s role as God’s chosen nation. Thus, await-
ing the rise of a new German state took on distinctly messianic, apocalyptic
overtones. These expectations were not limited to the political realm. Paul
J. Alexander, chronicling the “Legend of the Last Roman Emperor,” ob-
serves that “also the philosophy, literature, and historiography of nine-
teenth-century Germany were permeated by the hope for a united effort
of the German principalities and peoples against foreign domination and in-
fluence.”16
Krummacher goes to great pains to de-fang Kalbeck’s story and, after a
painstaking critique of the evidence, ultimately deems Kalbeck’s interpreta-
tion “not only forced, but simply impossible.”17 He adds, “Thus Kalbeck’s
representation—as momentous as it is—belongs not merely to the realm of
fable, but rather presents a falsification that serves the express purpose of
claiming a pointedly national character for the work.”18 I cannot agree with
Krummacher’s conclusion; if nothing else, it seems to fly in the face of the
evidence left by Brahms. Along with other recent writers on the Triumphlied
(Peter Petersen and Sabine Giesbrecht-Schutte), I still hear the work as an
undeniable expression of anti-French, pro-Hohenzollern patriotism.19
But it is not an uncomplicated patriotism, and I agree with Krummacher’s
perception of ambivalence in this piece and his doubts about Brahms’s inner
convictions in writing it. This has less to do with the composer’s political
outlook, however, and more to do with the overall insecurities many Ger-
mans felt toward their new empire during the founding years and their con-
sequent tendency to overcompensate in expressing their enthusiasm for the
new nation. Despite the euphoria of the moment (outwardly expressed in
Brahms’s Triumphlied), the arrival of the Kaiserreich in 1871 engendered
inward misgivings about the role of the new government in relation to the
increasingly spiritual and irrational quest for a German nation. The histo-
rian Reinhard Alings writes that “the Reich was characterized externally
and internally by a feeling of uncertainty,” which led at the time to a deluge
of national monuments. “Just like a confession of faith repeated again and
again,” he adds, these moments “conjured up something which, obviously,
did not exist to a sufficient degree: a single national identity of the Ger-
mans.”20 The Triumphlied may bear traces of such misgivings, not as a con-
scious political statement on Brahms’s part but rather against the com-
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 105

poser’s conscious intentions, as a typical overcompensation that glorifies the

new nation too unambiguously to be taken at face value.
Krummacher, citing the authority of Brahms’s friend Philipp Spitta, warns
against reading the Triumphlied as a purely political tract at the expense of
its “mystical sacred meaning.”21 In other words, a complete interpretation
of op. 55 must take into account not only its occasional subject (the Prus-
sian military victory of 1871 and the German state it produced) but also the
ways in which that subject interacts with the Triumphlied’s status as a bibli-
cal setting. At the intersection of these political and religious meanings
stands the apocalyptic core of the piece. But the Triumphlied’s particular ex-
pression of the apocalyptic paradigm differs substantially from that of Ein
deutsches Requiem. Brahms’s apocalyptic stance in this work is blatant and
relatively uncomplicated. By selecting verses from Revelation 19 for a work
that explicitly celebrates the Prussian victory over France and the founding
of the Kaiserreich, Brahms claims this as an apocalyptic moment in history.
He makes this apocalyptic meaning manifest in op. 55 by adding the biblical
citation “Offenb. Joh. Cap. 19” (Revelation 19) directly beneath the title
Triumphlied on the symbol-laden title page of the original score.22
Whereas the Requiem provides an apocalyptic time frame against which
the individual can measure his or her existence, in the Triumphlied, Brahms
abandons any sense of individuality and opts instead for an emphasis on
communal expression. Specifically, he adopts a monumental stance in the
Triumphlied to celebrate the deeply rooted authority of the new German
state in the figure of the Kaiser; he dedicated the piece to the living Kaiser,
Wilhelm I, but it is the crown itself which is immortalized in the Triumph-
lied. That distinction is highly significant for understanding the apocalyptic
character of the piece and for the changing nature of monumentality be-
tween the Gründerjahre and the fin de siècle, separate threads that I gather
as this chapter progresses.
Brahms’s correspondence from the years 1870 and 1871 clearly maps
out the origins of the Triumphlied as a direct response to the Prussian
military victory over France and the founding of the Kaiserreich in those
years. In 1870 Brahms was enjoying a newly won reputation as one of Ger-
many’s leading composers. Only the previous year his first great success, Ein
deutsches Requiem, had received its first complete performance (18 Febru-
ary in the Leipzig Gewandhaus). The ensuing success of his Alto Rhapsody,
op. 53, which premiered in 1870, not only cemented Brahms’s status as a
composer of the first rank but also established the choral-orchestral medium
as the outlet through which, for the time being, Brahms could best reach
German concert audiences. With the outbreak of war between Prussia and
France in August 1870, he quickly set to work on yet another such composi-
106 Brahms and the German Spirit

tion, which he first labeled his “Lied auf Paris,” in a letter to P. J. Simrock.23
By 12 December Brahms wrote to Karl Reinthaler, “Were I able, and had
I the courage, I would write a good Te Deum, and then I would travel to
Germany. The better one has tried to write, the better one feels—with a
normal fellow, it is not even a question of trying,” to which Reinthaler re-
plied: “Indeed!! What a time! My wife always says, you should have gone
secretly onto the battlefield; I think you should still preserve the world!—
Dear Brahms! Do it! In your God there will be light. Write the Te Deum that
you must write. It is my rock-solid conviction that it is to be the second great
act of your life. . . . You can do it and you must do it. Let it be the twin
brother to your ‘Requiem’!!”24
Brahms sent Reinthaler the completed first movement in February, which
served (at Brahms’s suggestion) as a conclusion to a performance of the Ger-
man Requiem at Bremen in memory of victims of the war. Brahms put off
completing the planned second and third movements until the fall of 1871,
turning instead to complete the Schicksalslied, op. 54, which he had at least
begun (and probably drafted in full) the previous year. By the fall of 1871,
he had composed the remaining two movements of his Triumphlied, which
he sent to Hermann Levi in Karlsruhe in November. Levi conducted the pre-
miere of the completed work in the Karlsruhe court theater on 5 June 1872,
and within two years the Triumphlied had been performed to great acclaim
in all the major German-speaking cities—Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Leipzig,
and Zurich.
Music critics at these first concerts immediately recognized the distinctly
different sound of the Triumphlied by comparison with the by then pre-
miered Requiem, Alto Rhapsody, and Schicksalslied. In particular, they noted
the frequent combining of the two four-part choirs in passages of homor-
hythmic declamation, producing a massive effect akin to that found in
Handel’s several Te Deums and, in the case of the “Hallelujah”-dominated
first movement of the Triumphlied, the Messiah’s “Hallelujah” Chorus. Al-
though many critics complimented the various moments of contrapuntal in-
terest throughout the work, nearly all were in agreement that Brahms’s
greatest accomplishment in this piece was its overwhelming and powerful
effect on the listener.25
Fig. 4.2 provides a brief schema of the three-movement work. As in so
many celebratory works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
Brahms chose D major as the tonality, and he does not stray far from the
home key throughout the piece. This is no mere obligatory observation.
Rather it indicates the consistency of affect that dominates the Triumphlied:
there is little relief from the ebullience expressed at the work’s outset. I
do not mean by this to disparage the piece. In fact, I think it is crucial for un-
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 107

Movement 1
Lebhaft, feierlich Tranquillo /
Animato
Orchestral Choral A B A’ trans. C
intro. entrance:

“Halleluja” Choral theme 1: Choral Theme 2: “Heil “Halleluja” “Heil und

“Heil und Preis” “Denn wahr- und Preis”
haftig und Preis” “Halleluja”
gerecht”
D major D minor D major
1–18 18–35 36–66 66–116 116–157 157–182 183–206

Movement 2
Mäßig belebt Lebhaft Ziemlich langsam,
doch nicht schleppend
Orchestral A B C
intro aba’

Choral theme 1 “Halleluja. Denn “Lasset uns freuen

“Lobet unsern Gott” der allmächtige und frölich sein”
“Und die ihn Gott . . .”
fürchtet . . .”
G major D major G major
1–8 8–110 110–143 143–185

Movement 3
Un poco
Lebhaft animato Etwas lebhafter Feierlich

Orchestral A B C Baritone D
intro interlude

Baritone solo “Treu und “Und er tritt “Und hat einen “Ein König
“Und ich sahe Wahrhaftig” die Kelter” Namen geschrieben” aller Könige”
den Himmel”
D minor → D major Få minor → D major

Figure 4.2 Formal schema of Triumphlied, op. 55.

derstanding the meaning of the Triumphlied to acknowledge its relative

monochromaticism—a point to which I return shortly. The third movement,
also in D major, does introduce a baritone soloist for contrast. But he is al-
lotted only two brief interjections, one at the outset, one midway through
the movement. And, by and large, the tone of movement three is similar to
that of the first.
Real contrast in the Triumphlied comes only with the shift to triple meter,
108 Brahms and the German Spirit

G major, and the relatively gentler tone of the second movement. But the
change in tone is, indeed, only “relative.” Like the outer movements, this
one begins with forte martial dotted rhythms, often across octave leaps.
Moreover, a D major “Hallelujah” returns, along with the marking “Lebhaft”
from the beginning of the piece, to introduce the substantial middle portion
of the movement. The return to G major at the close of the second move-
ment (containing a quote of “Nun danket alle Gott,” discussed later in this
chapter), however, does truly provide a lyrical and quiet pause. Yet, perhaps
ironically, it is precisely in these quiet strains that the truly monumental
function of the piece surfaces. To understand how this is so, it is useful to
examine the general role of the chorale in the expression of monumentality
in German music of the nineteenth century.

Of Monuments and Chorales

Cornelius’s “Riders of the Apocalypse” and Brahms’s Triumphlied were
created at different times and under different social and political circum-
stances. Yet each was directly inspired by Prussia’s drive toward German
unification. Cornelius was one of the so-called Nazarenes, German paint-
ers working in Rome during the first half of the nineteenth century. Like
Böcklein and Runge, Cornelius sought to revive German painting by recap-
turing the neoclassical techniques of the sixteenth century, thereby drawing
an equation between modern Germany and Greco-Roman antiquity as cul-
tural paragons. The Nazarenes’ underlying impulse to connect Germany to
a lineage backwards through Renaissance Italy to Greece and Rome is not
far removed from the similar historical gesture of Jakob Burkhardt in his-
tory or Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Prussian official architecture. “The Hel-
lenic ideal belonged,” writes Tony Davies in his penetrating study of hu-
manism, “for Hegel and Humboldt as for Goethe and Schiller, not to the
remote past and the post-mortem formalities of an ancient language, but to
the future. For them, the modern Germany they were engaged in building,
cultured, orderly, and modern, would be the fruition of what the ancient
Greeks had dreamed.”26 In much of Cornelius’s work the classical impulse
led to static representations of allegorical figures. But the intimations of cir-
cular design in “Riders of the Apocalypse” convey real drama and panic as
befits the work’s subject matter.27
Cornelius conceived his “Riders of the Apocalypse” as part of a series of
frescoes for the proposed Campo Santo in Berlin. He came to Berlin in 1840
at the invitation of the newly crowned King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who
sought a reorganized German Christian Church as the cornerstone of the
Prussian state. The new king envisioned a vast rebuilding of the state cathe-
dral to match the neoclassical museum that stood opposite it. Friedrich Wil-
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 109

helm never realized the bulk of his reforms, yet in the process or pursuing
them, he assembled some of the greatest artists and thinkers in the German-
speaking world. Cornelius was only one of many luminaries drawn to Berlin
by the king and his emissary Wilhelm von Humboldt. Others included the
brothers Grimm, Friedrich Schelling, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Rückert, and
Karl von Savigny. Cornelius had spent the previous twenty-one years in Mu-
nich working on large civic frescoes for King Ludwig of Bavaria, most fa-
mously for the Glypothek Museum and the Ludwigskirche.
When Cornelius fell out of favor with the king in the late 1830s, he was
only too happy to accept an invitation to come to Berlin to work on a
proposed rebuilding of the Hohenzollern Cathedral. Friedrich Wilhelm
charged Cornelius with designing a series of frescoes for the open colon-
nades that were to connect the cathedral with the royal family tomb. Al-
though plans for the new cathedral were halted after the revolutions of
1848, Cornelius continued to sketch the designs. First and foremost among
these was the “Riders of the Apocalypse,” which Cornelius began while in
Rome in 1845. For this and a few of the other planned frescoes, he made
vast cartoons, which were exhibited in museums during the late 1850s, long
after plans for the cathedral had been scrapped. In addition to these exhib-
its, mass-produced engravings and enthusiastic critical reactions to the car-
toons helped popularize the “Riders of the Apocalypse” in Germany long
before the public could have imagined Prussia’s precipitous rise to power at
the end of the 1860s. Yet the work is not without its own nationalist sig-
nificance, recognized by several contemporary critics. The Berlin art critic
Hermann Grimm (son of Wilhelm Grimm and an indirect acquaintance of
Brahms through Joseph Joachim) recognized in Cornelius’s cartoons for the
Berlin Campo Santo an expression of the modern national character, in
distinction to the more Italianate qualities of similar subjects among
Cornelius’s earlier works in Munich. Grimm called the frescoes “monu-
ments to the German spirit.”28 And in a separate essay on the 1859 exhibit
of Cornelius’s cartoons at the Prussian Academy of Art, a pamphlet that
Brahms owned, Grimm again singles out the Berlin frescoes as untouched
by the Italian ideas (and Catholic co-workers) that aided in realizing
Cornelius’s frescoes of Greek mythological imagery for the Glypothek in
Munich. “Here he sketched like a German whose imagination [Phantasie] is
stimulated to the highest individual activity by the content of the Bible.”29
Similarly, Cornelius’s first biographer, Herman Riegel, compares the painter
in 1867 to his fellow Nazarenes Asmus Jacob Carstens, who “took refuge in
antiquity,” and Johann Friedrich Overbeck, who similarly escaped to the re-
ligiosity of the Middle Ages. “Cornelius,” writes Riegel, “permeated with
the same insight, driven by the same power as were they, chose neither an-
tiquity nor Christianity; he reached for the full life, and stood on the side
110 Brahms and the German Spirit

where the spiritual center of the masses resided. He chose the national
side.”30
Grimm’s and Riegel’s choice of words reminds us that this “national
side” was expressed in monumental terms. Here some clarity on the term
“monumentality” is in order. Too often in music and art criticism the word
is used merely to convey physical scale or is substituted for the sublime. This
is certainly the case for Carl Dahlhaus, whose brief essay on the monumen-
tal falls within his discussion of Beethoven’s symphonic style and flows im-
mediately out of his exposition “The Sublime and the ‘Noble Ode.’” Within
this context, Dahlhaus provides a useful beginning toward an understand-
ing of monumentality in music, and he identifies three specific and closely
interrelated attributes of the style as it appears in Beethoven’s symphonies.
First, he asserts that “one of the essential ingredients of the monumental
style is a simplicity that stands up to being stated emphatically without col-
lapsing into empty rhetoric.” He then identifies “a slow regular harmonic
rhythm” as a building block of that emphatic simplicity, and the ability to
be seen as a balanced whole as the style’s aesthetic goal.31 These observa-
tions are valuable for defining monumentality within the symphonic tradi-
tion and (particularly) within the aesthetic of the sublime.
But Dahlhaus makes little attempt to look beyond the musical implica-
tions of his definition. In fact, he begins his explication of the monumental
by purposefully moving the discussion of Beethoven’s symphonies out of
the realm of the sociological, where Paul Bekker had placed it at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century.32 Nevertheless, Dahlhaus does touch on a spa-
tial metaphor that begins to point toward a broader definition of musical
monumentality, one that might include how this style functions like monu-
mental forms in other arts, particularly in architecture and sculpture. While
attempting to explain how the first movement of the Ninth Symphony can
be simultaneously monumental and dramatic (which “would seem to be
mutually exclusive”), Dahlhaus avers that the apparent existence of two
opposing impulses (the stasis of monumentality and the forward push of
drama) are “characteristic of the monumental style in music, which may be
comparable to architecture, but differs from it by reason of a temporal
element which always contains a trace—however diffident—of the dra-
matic.”33 Dahlhaus nearly concedes here that music, on account of its tem-
porality, cannot be monumental in the same manner as a Denkmal. Such a
definition is of no value for any musical work that, like the Triumphlied,
does not claim to be autonomous. But by raising the aura of architecture,
Dahlhaus acknowledges that some connection should exist between the
two. If it can, that definition has to explain how music can achieve the same
effect as a plastic monument.
As public structures, be they statues, buildings, or some combination
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 111

thereof, monuments must transcend the individual and personal; they must
convey ideas that are shared by the larger community and, in fact, help that
community to define itself. (Here, Bekker’s approach to Beethoven’s sym-
phonies as “society forming” would serve us well.) Thus, even when com-
memorating an individual, monuments must refer to more general princi-
ples and ideas for which that individual stands. Additionally, public
monuments must allow the individual viewer to recognize his or her place in
relation to the larger community by providing both a spatial and a temporal
dimension to the act of remembering: spatial by orienting the individual to-
ward symbolic representations of the community (and/or nation); temporal
by concretizing a specific hero, act, or event from the past and making it
present to the viewer.
Perhaps the only systematic approach to defining musical monumentality
that takes this spatial metaphor into account is Arnold Schering’s 1934 es-
say “Über den Begriff des Monumentalen in der Musik” (On the Idea of
Monumentality in Music).34 Most relevant for Schering’s metaphorical com-
parison between music and architecture is the feeling of spaciousness that a
structural monument provides and to which music may aspire. He places
particular emphasis on music of the baroque period, with its characteristic
separation of the performing forces (i.e., the concerto principle) as inher-
ently monumental and as a model for achieving spatial effects akin to those
of physical monuments.35 Schering’s baroque ideal may be applied to the
most often cited moment in the Triumphlied: the quotation of the chorale
“Nun danket alle Gott” near the end of the second movement. Most notable
in this passage is the spatial separation of performing forces, particularly
when considered against the material in the preceding two thirds of the
movement. As outlined in fig. 4.2, the movement divides into three distinct
parts, according to the separate verses of Revelation 19 that Brahms sets
here. In sections A and B, Brahms constantly interweaves the various sec-
tions of the orchestra and the two choirs to fill the sound space. Even when
the instruments are not literally doubling the voices in those sections of the
movement, their figures accent vocal entrances and complement the choirs’
melodic lines. So, for example, in the apparent diversity of material at the
choral statement of “alle seine Knechte, lobet unsern Gott” in bars 12–23,
the busier string lines merely add eighth-note motion to the choral material,
while the accented hammer-stroke quarter-note figures in the winds (bars
12, 14, and 16) announce the alternating entrances of choirs 1 and 2.
By contrast, the roles of the various sounding bodies in the last section of
movement two (“Ziemlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend,” bars 143–185)
are mostly differentiated and complement, rather than intertwine with, one
another. Brahms makes this immediately apparent through the notated met-
rical contrast (4/4 against 12/8) between the two choirs (ex. 4.2). Only when
 Ziemlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend "Nun danket alle Gott" reference
flt     
ob. mf dolce
143                 flt.     
clar.        
           
     
                      
         
fp
f trmpt.
             
      
      
bas.
hrn.1
112 Brahms and the German Spirit

Laßt uns freu - - en,

Choir 1     Choir 2 
          12   
  8          

f Laßt uns freu - en und fröh - lich
      mf    
        12
       
  8  
Laßt uns freu - - en,
fröh -
vl. 1
vl. 2 p             
vla.                                    
                      
  
      
            
p
f
cresc. p
vc.
db.            
       
 
       
 p
  flt.
149 ob.
                 
               
   
  clar.
      
  
trmpt.  
              
 
uns freu - - en und fröh - lich sein,
   cresc.
                laßt       

         
  
          
                   
lasßt uns freu - en und fröh - lich sein,
sein Laßt uns freu - en und fröh - lich fröh - lich sein
cresc.
f
laßt uns freu - en, laßt uns freu - en und fröh - lich sein,
          
      
                              
     
lich sein, und fröh - lich sein, laßst uns freu - - en, uns freu - en und fröh - lich sein,

  pizz.
                           
                

mf 
            
cresc.
f

                                    
      

Example 4.2 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement two, bars 143–153.

The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 113
114 Brahms and the German Spirit

the second choir enters in 12/8 do the strings double: choir 1 always stands
alone with its duple material. Additionally, the unwavering quarter-note
motion of the winds stands apart as a rhythmic “continuo,” from which
emerges a reference to the first six notes from the chorale “Nun danket alle
Gott.” This tersest of quotations is played in unison first by the trumpets
and flutes (on D–E–D, bars 147–149) and then by the oboes, clarinets, bas-
soons, and first horn (A–B–A, bars 149–150). Unlike the enmeshed figures
of the preceding sections, the unison wind writing here stands out as a dis-
tinct line that hovers above the lilting, 12/8 roulades of choir 2. By sharply
distinguishing content and timbre, Brahms creates a sonic allusion to spa-
ciousness akin to the large spaces one associates with a monument. The cho-
rale, referred to here only by its incipit, is memorialized in the manner that
an inscription on a monument might quote a hero or other historical figure
and thereby encapsulate that figure’s meaning. In both cases, the object of
veneration is set apart and made as broad and easily perceptible as possible.
We are not asked to contend with the subject’s true complexity, poten-
tial contradictions, or blemishes, only with simplified abstraction. Thus,
the hushed tones of this passage notwithstanding, Brahms’s allusion is a
model of how musical monumentalism may approach the effect of a plastic
monument.36
This chorale already had symbolic status, however, as did the entire genre
by this point in the nineteenth century. Sabine Giesbrecht-Schutte claims
that this was one of those chorales “whose exclusively Christian tradition
became overlaid with a militant nationalism in the course of the late eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries,” adding, “after 1848 one can practically
consider it a motto of Prussian Expansionspolitik.”37 Giesbrecht-Schutte
makes her point while comparing Brahms’s chorale quotation in the
Triumphlied with Karl Reintaler’s use of the equally well known “Ein feste
Burg ist unser Gott” within his own commemorative piece for the new
Reich, the Bismarckhymne, op. 29 (1874). Reintaler adhered to a familiar
pattern of employing chorales in large-scale compositions: he placed it near
the end, as an apotheosis. In the most concrete terms, this practice dates
back to the Leipzig chorale cantatas of J. S. Bach, whose closing four-part
chorale harmonizations brought the modern tendencies of the preceding
arias, recitatives, and choruses into a religious tradition that led directly
back to Luther and the origins of the German Protestant Church. Something
of this function was brought over into the symphony by Beethoven with the
hymn of his Ninth, and then more directly still by those nineteenth-century
symphonists who used actual chorales in their symphonic finales. A familiar
example is the Symphony no. 5 (“Reformation”) by Mendelssohn, in which
he fashions an entire finale out of a fantasia-like development of “Ein feste
Burg.”
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 115

Brahms did not hesitate to treat the chorale iconically within his own First
Symphony (C Minor, op. 68), but to very different effect. Like the opening
movement of that work, the finale is initiated by a slow introduction that
contains kernel motives of the ensuing allegro. Brahms differentiates the lat-
ter introduction, however, by moving beyond the abstract jagged and disso-
nant motives of bars 1–29 to concrete themes. Specifically, two symbol-
laden episodes alternate at the end of the introduction to the finale: one, an
alphorn melody set against shimmering string tremolos; the other a four-
voice “imaginary” chorale whose setting in the brass and low winds unmis-
takably alludes to a Lutheran chorale in the most religious guise possible.
Brahms initially moves beyond these two evocative melodies in the allegro
of movement four to an elegiac main theme, whose resemblance to the
“Freude” theme of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has been the fodder of
much debate since the premiere of Brahms’s First Symphony. But both the
alphorn and the chorale themes “replace” the allegro’s main theme in turn:
first, the alphorn theme serves as a point of arrival in bar 285 to usher in the
“recapitulation” of this quasi–sonata form movement; and later, at bars
407–415 of the coda, it is the chorale that marks the most emphatic arrival
of the entire symphony. Whether one hears this substitution for the “Ode to
Joy”–like main allegro theme as affirming or effacing the Beethovenian tra-
dition, there can be no doubting the power of the chorale to suggest a spiri-
tually tinged shared cultural memory. It is not merely the volume and rhyth-
mic breadth of these bars that create the effect of arrival here, it is the
symbolic sound of the chorale itself that evokes monumentality.
But Brahms’s imaginary chorale could hardly sound more different from
Mendelssohn’s chorale fantasy in the finale of the “Reformation” Sym-
phony. Mendelssohn composed that work in anticipation of a performance
in Berlin during 1830, the three-hundredth anniversary of Luther’s Augsburg
Confession.38 Though edifying, Mendelssohn’s commemoration merely
affirms Luther’s centrality for the German cultural traditions that by 1830
included the symphony. This is too direct a celebration and too much a
reflection of the audience’s own image of itself to provoke listeners to re-
consider their identity; it does not carry the active character of Brahms’s
dramatic triumph of the chorale. Brahms, by contrast, forces his audience
to grapple with the unconventional use of an unsung four-voice chorale
(with all of its attendant historical connotations) at the height of a sym-
phony. Myriad symbolic associations are set in play (religion, Luther,
Bach, Beethoven, the symphonic tradition), all of which demand to be inter-
preted.
This difference between Mendelssohn’s chorale finale in 1830 and Brahms’s
chorale “apotheosis” in 1876—specifically Brahms’s apparent need to offer
his listeners an edifying lesson—speaks to the changing nature of German
116 Brahms and the German Spirit

identity in the Kaiserreich and how the German public defined itself in rela-
tion to the new regime of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I. At issue was
how and whether the German public would come to recognize itself in
the state. Art would come to play an increasingly active role in forming
that image of the nation. Brahms’s First Symphony, with its triumphant cho-
rale, laid strong claims to speak for the traditional and learned side of Ger-
man culture, as opposed to the more progressive and less rational art of
Richard Wagner. Reinhold Brinkmann has argued that by supplanting a
Beethovenesque theme with the alphorn theme and the chorale, Brahms
was “taking back” the hopeful, humanistic message of Beethoven’s Ninth
(à la the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn of Thomas Mann’s Doktor
Faustus), presenting instead a more resigned and regressive faith in nature
and religion.39 Brinkmann’s is a challenging view of Brahms that fits into
a broader picture of the composer as a latecomer and melancholic, look-
ing back pessimistically from the later nineteenth century on the promise
of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” In this light it is not surprising that one year
after composing his First Symphony, Brahms penned the motet “Warum
ist das Licht gegeben?” which also reaches its apotheosis (and conclusion)
in a chorale—a move that might be considered pessimistic in its own right.40
These somewhat later (1876–77) and more problematic treatments of
chorales aside, in 1871 Brahms uses “Nun danket alle Gott” in his
Triumphlied to deliver a purely affirmative message to the public and one
that is clearly monumental in conception. The message is concretized closer
to the end of movement two, when the complementing second half of the
chorale’s opening phrase is supplied by choir 1 in bars 172–176 (ex. 4.3)
and 180–182. Krummacher observes that Brahms has cleverly alluded to the
text of the chorale through the biblical passage at that moment, as the bibli-
cal phrase “und ihm die Ehre geben” is sung to the same melodic half phrase
that sets “und edlen Frieden geben” in the second stanza of the chorale.41
The connection to the chorale text is stronger still if we consider the entire
half stanza from which that half phrase is drawn:

Der ewig reiche Gott

Woll uns bei unsrem Leben
Ein immer fröhlich Herz
Und edlen Frieden geben

In the Triumphlied both choirs sing “Laßt uns freuen und fröhlich sein” im-
mediately preceding “und ihm die Ehre geben,” alluding to the same grant-
ing of an “ever joyous heart” in the relevant chorale verses. Amid the tumult
of the Triumphlied, the end of the second movement is indeed a moment
of “noble peace.” One cannot be so certain, however, whether Brahms
expected listeners to make such a specific association to that text in “Nun
danket alle Gott.” Equally notable (though less verbally immediate) is the
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 117

"Nun danket alle Gott": first strain

    
   flt.      p dolce
   
 
3

         
trmpt.
   p

winds
    
      
"Nun danket alle Gott": second strain


                    p   und ihm     
Choir 2 Choir 1
 fröh - lich sein,

choirs
      fr  fröh - lich
sein, Laßtuns freu - en und fröh - lich,
sein,
und

ihm die Eh - re ge - ben
       

          
p und ihm
sein, fröh - lich sein.

Example 4.3 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement two, bars 172–176.

allusion to a kingdom from that melodic half phrase in stanza three of

the chorale, “Im höchsten Himmelsthrone,” or the mention of the “great
things” God does for us in stanza one (“Der große Dinge tut / An uns und
allen Enden”). Among God’s great deeds is the founding of the Reich, as
stated in the preceding portion (section B) of the Triumphlied: “Denn der
allmächtige Gott hat das Reich eingenommen.” Since all three stanzas con-
tain text at the half phrase in question that might relate to the biblical
passage used by Brahms, it is fair to conclude along with Kalbeck (and
several later commentators) that Brahms is indeed pointing to the newly re-
vived figure of the emperor as the underlying object of veneration in the
Triumphlied.
At every functional level the music and text are working toward a
monumentalizing effect at this juncture in the piece.

1. Brahms evokes a chorale that already connotes both ancient (Luther)

and recent (nationalist) history, thereby bringing the past(s) into the
present.
2. By tying those temporal realms to the Bible, Brahms not only ex-
tends the time line of the chorale back into biblical antiquity but also
adds a sacred meaning to recent political events: God is directly re-
sponsible for the Prussian military victory of the previous year.
3. The layering effect of the orchestration that separates and elevates
“Nun danket alle Gott” creates a sonic “space” in which the listener
can place himself or herself in relation to the larger community.
4. The object of veneration (a chorale) is communal rather than indi-
vidual.
118 Brahms and the German Spirit

The last point has special significance when one considers that Brahms did,
in fact, dedicate the Triumphlied to an individual, the newly crowned Wil-
helm I. Not only does the Kaiser’s name appear as dedicatee on the title
page, but also the dedication page that follows in the score is unusually or-
nate, featuring the Hohenzollern crown and radiant beams streaming to-
ward the inscription “To his Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm I. reverently dedicated
by the composer.”42 Many commentators from 1872 to the present have
even seen Wilhelm I in the person of the rider on the white horse in the last
movement of the Triumphlied. Yet the object of veneration in this piece is
not Wilhelm the individual but rather the crown itself. And this was typical
for monuments of the Grunderjahre. In the thoroughgoing study of national
monuments in Germany, Thomas Nipperdey distinguishes the highly per-
sonal commemorations of Wilhelm II from the generalized veneration of his
grandfather, which “are always less individual monuments of the repre-
sented monarch[;] they are much more monuments to the princely office,
monuments to monarchy as a form of rule, and then also monuments to the
nation.”43 A good example of this principle in action is the refusal of Wil-
helm I to be realistically represented in the narrative circular fresco at the
base of the Siegessäule in Berlin, at the time the largest and most expensive
monument to German unification in the Prussian capital.44 According to
the fresco’s painter, Anton von Werner, Wilhelm did not want to particular-
ize the identity of the new Reich as “Prussian” at a time when political sta-
bility dictated that all parts of the newly united Germany feel that they too
had a place in the state.45 Brahms’s monumentalization of the chorale “Nun
danket alle Gott” is entirely in keeping with that tenor of the times and is an
appropriate glorification not merely of the Kaiser as monarch but of the
monarchy itself. And this in turn is in keeping with Brahms’s strong support
of the new state under Wilhelm I and Bismarck as the embodiment of Ger-
many, a position that Brahms was to maintain until his death and that
clearly distinguishes his modernist patriotism from the völkisch nationalism
that grew in opposition to the Reich through the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century. The events of 1870–71 briefly suppressed the conflict be-
tween these two sides of German nationalism. But they gradually resur-
faced over the next two decades, as Brahms addressed in his Fest- und
Gedenkspruche, op. 109 of 1889. I return to that part of the story in the
next chapter.

Apocalypse Now
Brahms’s Triumphlied also shares an aesthetic quality with Werner’s fresco;
both works present a tremendous sensation of motion that nevertheless
seems already to have reached its conclusion. Whereas Werner’s oil can-
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 119

vases in celebration of the new Reich exercised realism, most famously The
Proclamation of the Empire at Versailles, his fresco on the Siegessäule at-
tempts to convey the story of the Reich’s arrival since the Napoleonic Wars
in historicist terms reminiscent of Cornelius’s “Riders of the Apocalypse”
(and recalls that work’s similar deviation from its artist’s more typically
classicizing style). Allegorical figures abound in Werner’s fresco amid the
motion-filled scenes of battles, suggesting that the meaning of the events de-
picted are eternal, that the story of German unification narrated here is
more than a current event but rather part of an ageless drama of cosmic im-
port. Because Werner’s images circumscribe a column, and are therefore in-
herently circular, the viewer literally concludes where he or she originated;
there is no real beginning or ending to this fresco, or, rather, they are one
and the same. Clearly, there is a beginning and an end to the Triumphlied—
such are the practical limitations of music in the European common practice
tradition. But lacking in this piece is the usual sense of directed forward mo-
tion that we would expect from Brahms. Even in Ein deutsches Requiem,
which wanders between the pillars of its outer movements (as I argued in the
preceding chapter), the plodding bass F’s that begin the first and last move-
ment suggest a forward-moving continuum which reaches its conclusion in
the fading strains that end each of those movements. And the climactic
fugue at the end of the sixth movement suggests an arrival, even if the path
toward it is unclear.
In the Triumphlied there is, instead, a sense of constantly beginning in
mid-stream. Hence, the dotted-rhythm motives that begin all three move-
ments seem more to pick up a continuing thread than to start anew. In the
work’s opening bars (as highlighted in ex. 4.4), the convergence of a tonic
statement of the introductory orchestral theme in the winds (bars 1–3) and a
dominant statement of the same in the strings (bars 2–3) blurs the notion of
a “beginning,” as does the awkward metrical displacement of the strings’
entrance to the fifth eighth note of the bar. That syncopation spawns a se-
quence of weak-beat entrances on diminished chords in bars 6–9, from
which the music does not right itself rhythmically and harmonically until
the eight-bar dominant “pedal” of bars 11–18. Thus, more than half of the
orchestral prelude is delivered in an imbalanced developmental fashion,
something we might expect near the middle or end of a movement, not at
the outset.
Although the dotted rhythms at the beginning of the other two move-
ments are not accompanied by quite so drastic a dislocation, the very ges-
ture of returning to this martial motive with every new movement suggests
an ongoing thread throughout the entire piece, as if it were all cut from the
same cloth. And these two movements’ openings are not without their own
rhythmic digressions, each of which undermines a sense of a clear begin-
120 Brahms and the German Spirit

Tonic  
       
                        
    
Lebhaft, feierlich

          
High         
winds    
f         
                       
Low           
              
winds         
  
 
       
    
High
strings                 
     
     
marc.
f         
      
Low               
strings        

Dominant
 
 
                 
                   
5 
   
  
         
 
              
              


          
            
 
       
  
 

f largamente
 
   
          
          
   
o7
vii  ii 6 

               
8           
      


         




    
  ff
      
    

          
         
    
                         

              
                      


     
ff
 
   

     
       
vii o7 v6  viio7 o7
vii  ii IV 6

Example 4.4 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement one, opening: tonic dominant statement of theme
and metrical displacements on diminished-seventh chords.
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 121

ning. So, for example, at the outset of movement two the competing accents
in 3 4 meter among the dotted figures of the high, middle, and low strings
(with contrabassoon) in bars 1–6 (ex. 4.5A) fail to provide any convincing
sense of downbeat, an effect that is exacerbated by the initial entrance on
beat two by the violins and viola.46 Just six bars later (ex. 4.5B), the initial
choral entrance in G major is promptly interrupted, not only by a harmonic
shift first to E major (choir 1, bars 12–14), then to E minor (choir 2, bars
14–16), but also by an awkward seven-beat phrase that takes its rhythmic
cue from the second-beat entrance at the beginning of the movement. As in
the previous movement, the rhythmic peculiarities that accompany the dot-
ted motive at the movement’s outset foster rhythmic irregularities that con-
fuse the listener’s sense of meter and thereby diminish a clear sense of a be-
ginning. Finally, there is a hint of the Schrekensfanfare (à la Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony) in the dissonant clash between the strings’ melodic de-
scent Bã–A–G–F against the winds’ sustained-interval A–Cå which initiates
the final movement. And again the dissonance is not merely a harmonic ef-
fect; once more the strings enter on an odd beat (the pickup to beat three),
forcing the introductory phrase of paired two-bar phrases to come to a gear-
grinding halt that requires an “extra” two-bar unit to reach the closing for-
tissimo figure on the second beat of bar 4.
Nowhere, then, in the three-movement work does Brahms offer a clear
commencing point. Rather, we are constantly plunged into the fray. Adding
to this effect are the recurrent references to the opening “Heil und Preis”
motive throughout the piece.47 In the second movement, a direct statement
on D major (within a prevailing key of G major) surfaces in bars 36–38 to
the words “unsern Gott.” Less direct, but nevertheless significant, is the first
complete choral statement in the third movement beginning at bar 22 at the
text “Treu und Wahrhaftig.” The motivic connection here is far more gen-
eral but maintains enough of the rhythmic and intervallic profile to recall
the “Heil und Preis” motive of the first movement. I point out these relation-
ships not to make a claim of thematic unity in the Triumphlied, but rather to
suggest that it would be a meaningless quality to seek in a work that never
progresses from where it started, that is frozen in one ecstatic and jubilant
moment. Appropriate though this aesthetic may be to the occasion for
which the piece was conceived, the potential stasis in this design is fraught
with aesthetic difficulties. The issue lies not in a dearth of contrapuntal de-
tails or colorful effects, of which there are many in this work, but rather in
the way they are placed in relation to one another. A more detailed analysis
of one distinct theme and its treatment within a movement serves to illus-
trate. Brahms’s setting of the words “und die ihn fürchten, Kleine und
Große” in the second movement counts as one of the most delicate passages
in the entire piece. This idea appears as a secondary theme beginning in bar
122 Brahms and the German Spirit

Mäßig belebt  
  
       
           
 
violin I

 
 violin II

    
         
   

      
viola

   
 
       

   
        

    


Bass, cello

 
 
cont. bassoon

 
5          
  
            



          

f`
   
       
 
        
           
       
 
 
  
        
       

         
  
 
f`
 

  
     
      
   


Example 4.5 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement two, opening: (A) metrical displace-
ment of theme; (B) seven-beat interjections, bars 12–16.

22, after which it alternates for the rest of the large opening period with the
initial choral theme and its text, “Lobet unsern Gott, alle seine Knechte”
(ex. 4.6). Were this passage to appear in any of Brahms’s other works for
chorus and orchestra, it likely would be praised for the canonic inversion
between the bass and soprano of choir 2 (bars 22–25) and again between
the alto and soprano of choir 1 in bars 26–30. Equally laudable would be
the gradual crescendo and transformation in bars 30–38 of the descending
eighth notes at “beide Kleine und Große” into the cascading set of entries on
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 123

B
7

      
     
    
12

          
             
al - le, al - le sei - ne Knech - te, al - le,

       
 


              
  
          
al - le, al - le sei - ne Knech - te,


    
      
7

Example 4.5 (continued)

“lobet unsern Gott,” all concluding in an echo of the “Heil und Preis” mo-
tive from the first movement (in D major, no less).
There is, however, something about this passage (and many other admira-
ble places in the Triumphlied) that is utterly un-Brahmsian, and this has
more to do with what is not here than with what Brahms has composed. In
the Triumphlied, passages like this one lack the needed musical space to set
them off from their surroundings; there are no unaccompanied passages for
the choirs, nor prolonged statements by either the wind or the string choirs
alone or as a unified counterpart to the choirs. Instead, here, and in the en-
tire piece, all available forces—winds, choirs, and stings—are continuously
present.48 One consequence of such full-throttle writing is that there are
none of the long-breathed, elegiac lines with which Brahms frequently be-
gins a large-scale piece or movement. In the Triumphlied, Brahms does not
provide enough of the continuity in either choir or any section of the orches-
tra that is necessary to form a fully developed melodic sentence. Therefore,
what ideas do emerge have little in the way of a formal frame of the kind we
are so accustomed to hearing in Brahms’s music. Things happen too imme-
diately in this piece for those sorts of moments to form. It would be easy to
assign the sense of immediacy I have just described in the Triumphlied to the
sudden and dramatic impact of the event that occasioned the piece, the
 Choir 1
22 und die ihn
 mf
      
         
p
  mf
Winds und die ihn fürch - ten
    
         
und die ihn fürch - -
mf

und die ihn fürch - ten bei - de, Klei - ne und Gro ße
124 Brahms and the German Spirit

mf
                 
     
mf
und die ihn fürch - - ten

Choir 2 mf
und die ihn fürch - - - - - ten,

mf
 

                    
 
und die ihn fürch - ten bei - de, Klei - ne und Gro - - ße
die ihn

    
   p                  
   
p
Strings
   
       

 
  

  p   
 


 8
       
2  
  

        
         
cresc.
Winds
       
           
  

fürch - ten bei de, Klei - ne und Gro - ße, bei - de Klei - ne und Gro - ße,

               
                    
   Klei - ne und Gro - ße,

bei - de, Klei - ne und Gro - - ße.
lo -
Klei - ne und Gro - ße,
die ihn fürch - ten
          
         


    
ten ihn fürch - ten die ihn fürch - ten, die ihn fürch -

cresc.

      bei - de Klei - ne und Gro - ße, bei - de, Klei - ne und Gro -

   
    
  
      
            
 
bei - de Klei - ne und Gro -
Strings
Choir 2
und die ihn fürch - ten, und die ihn frch -

           
      


           
    
und die ihn fürch - ten, die ihn fürch -

Choir 2
(with cello+double bass)

Example 4.6 Triumphlied, op. 55, movement two: bars 22–33.

The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 125
126 Brahms and the German Spirit

Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Yet, as I have already discussed in the preced-

ing chapter, that sense of millennial anticipation in nineteenth-century Ger-
many was bound up with long-standing apocalyptic historical paradigms.
And it is in this context—that is, when measured against an apocalyptic par-
adigm—that the Triumphlied (ironically) fails. Its failure lies not in its abil-
ity to satisfy pure musical expectations or in its stylistic qualities per se.
Rather, its failure is directly tied to the inherently problematic political iden-
tity of the Kaiserreich as an apocalyptic arrival point in modern German na-
tional history.
For a piece that assertively announces its apocalyptic purpose—recall
Brahms’s insistence that the biblical source of the text be stated on the title
page of the published score—op. 55 does not match the sense of anticipa-
tion and yearning that characterized so much of the apocalyptic tenor of
German national striving before 1870. Like the Kaiserreich itself, the
Triumphlied is completely upon us; the problem, apocalyptically speaking,
was the very real attainability of this goal. In comparison to the cultural
manifestations of apocalyptic thinking that the drive toward German na-
tionhood occasioned before 1870, the feeling of living in a transition before
the end (Kermode’s idea discussed in the preceding chapter) was directly
politicized for citizens of the Gründerjahre. If one could relate one’s own
death to the unknowable ends of time before the founding of the Reich, one
could, conversely, project one’s life onto the idea of the new nation, striving
toward its own lofty “End.” But the end here is distinctly an arrival rather
than an extinction. Ironically, when the Kaiserreich became a reality in
1871, the idea of a restored kingdom immediately began to lose its apoca-
lyptic power. Despite the biblical (and indeed apocalyptic) language with
which many writers described the events of 1870 and 1871, the experience
of witnessing the arrival of the restored kingdom on earth (i.e., the crowning
of King Wilhelm of Prussia as Kaiser of the new Reich) overshoots the
framework of Western apocalypticism by knowing, in fact, how it all ends.
The Triumphlied is a work that reflects this dilemma. As I noted earlier, this
is the only one of Brahms’s works for chorus and orchestra that does not
end quietly. Here Brahms provides no reflective frame, and precious few
moments of repose amidst the tumult, and he eschews the apocalyptic ges-
ture (as witnessed in its sister work, the Requiem) of stepping outside the
scope of time to imagine the apocalypse. Instead the idea of the “End”
comes rushing at us at every turn. Perhaps the same is true of any artwork
that self-consciously attaches itself to the earthly realization of this political
apocalyptic arrival, such as Cornelius’s “Riders of the Apocalypse” or
Werner’s fresco on the Siegessäule. Like those works, then, the Triumphlied
could be described as one great ending. Brahms himself labeled the first
movement as such when he announced to Hermann Levi in a letter of April
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 127

1871 that he had recently performed his Requiem again in Bremen and
added, “This time we have added a fortissimo conclusion.” Unlike the for-
mal frame that separates the arrival of an ending in movement six of Ein
deutsches Requiem from the quasi-timelessness implied by the sameness
of the outer (first and seventh) movements in that work, the end in the
Triumphlied is ever present and immediate.
This lack of a classicizing frame also affects the larger formal scheme
of the Triumphlied. In part this is a function of the work’s unusual (for
Brahms) episodic character. None of the three movements follows a cyclical
(A B A etc.) or otherwise overtly rational form. My own labeling in fig. 4.2
bears out this episodic quality in op. 55. Both the first and second move-
ments contain internal restatements of their respective opening themes. But
in neither case does this return amount to a reprise per se. Rather, those
themes are developed anew, their constituent motives are reorganized, and
new developments of the themes are pursued. Formally, the scheme of each
of these movements has more of the rambling character of baroque style to
it than the classical attention to proportions one associates with Brahms. In
both movements one and two, the thematic return gives way to transitional
material that brings the movement to a close with new material. The close of
the first movement has a particular formal peculiarity, in that it displays
many of the clichés of a finale, most notably that of a symphony. After
rounding off the main portion of the first movement with a highly altered re-
turn to the opening theme in bars 116–157, Brahms gradually works his
way to a piano dominant pedal (beginning in bar 170) that builds through a
gradual crescendo and an increasing level of harmonic tension (it arrives at a
viio7/V over the 5 [A] pedal) to an animato conclusion at bar 183.49 Now
the “Heil und Preis” motive is taken up in block chords by all eight voices
across the two choirs, who are eventually joined by the entire orchestra for a
brief fortissimo diversion to the parallel (D) minor (bars 191–192). Al-
though Brahms does not set this interjection off with a new tempo, it bears
all the marks of a brief pulling back before a final acceleration, one of the
most typical devices in Beethovenian finales. Indeed, when the choir splits
off from the instruments again, its unison octave-leap articulations of “Heil
und Preis” against the upsurging torrents of sixteenth notes in the strings
and lower winds strongly recall the concluding choral exclamations from
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Everything here signals the end—not just of a movement but, specifically,
a finale. In a piece in which the end is everywhere, it matters not that we are
only at the end of the first of three movements. Even in a one-movement
work, however, this sort of drive to the final bar is out of character for
Brahms. A quick comparison with his other large-scale choral-orchestral
works demonstrates how unusual this formal approach is for him. The
128 Brahms and the German Spirit

Schicksalslied is the most explicitly tripartite among these other works.

Indeed, it is specifically the return to the opening material that makes
Brahms’s setting of Hölderlin’s text so compelling. As discussed earlier,
Brahms completed this work in the spring and summer of 1871, taking time
off from composing the last two movements of the Triumphlied to do so.
Most of the compositional questions that absorbed Brahms in his final work
on the Schicksalslied concerned its ending. In Hölderlin’s text the graces of
the gods in the first passage (set in E-flat major) are sharply juxtaposed
with the miserable lot of humanity in the second passage (set in the relative
C minor). Brahms, however, did not feel comfortable leaving the piece with
such a pessimistic conclusion and brought back the elegiac strains from the
opening of the work at its close as an orchestral Nachspiel in the parallel C
major rather than the expected key of E-flat in which that material was first
heard. Here, then, Brahms chose to manipulate the rational A B A form and
thereby displays his typical need to reconcile thematic material (if not key)
at the end of a large-scale work, even when that need trumps the composer’s
instinct to reflect the spirit of the poem accurately, as Brahms does not do in
setting Hölderlin here.50
In the later Gesang der Parzen (1882), Brahms eschews any strong re-
prise. Instead, the turn to a narrative voice (“So sangen die Parzen”) prompts
an eerie echo of the opening motive that dissolves into pianissimo unison
choral gasps and a chilling concluding fifth in the orchestra as the exiled old
man “shakes his head.” Here (by comparison with the through-composed
forms of the Triumphlied) the nature of the text dictates the quiet conclu-
sion of the music. The Alt-Rhapsodie, op. 53 (1869), is built on a progres-
sion from a C minor solo to a C major “hymn” for alto and men’s chorus,
although its constituent parts are both cyclical. Following a stormy intro-
duction, a distinct three-part aria in C minor and triple meter (“Ach, wer
heilet die Schmerzen . . .”; bars 48–115) grounds the piece, before the
change to C major, duple meter, and the entrance of the men’s chorus initi-
ates yet another closed three-part song form (“Ist auf deinem Psalter”).
As he had in the Requiem, Brahms balances his formal impulse to recapit-
ulate against a dramatic progression in the three single-movement works
for chorus and orchestra. The Triumphlied lacks either character. Neither in
its overall conception nor in the forms of the individual movements is there
any strong sense of return. And none of the movements progress toward
their conclusion with the same feeling of a logical process one finds in the
concluding C major transformation of the Schicksalslied or the dying echoes
of early turmoil at the end of the Gesang der Parzen. If any part of the
Triumphlied approaches the linear conception of these other works it is the
third movement, where the alternation between the baritone soloist and
chorus offers a greater sense of formal progression than in the purely choral
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 129

preceding movements. As the soloist enters in bar 7 with the revelation

“And I saw the heavens opened,” his prophetic tone reminds one immedi-
ately of movement six in Ein deutsches Requiem, where the baritone serves
a similarly oracular function. Also reminiscent of that moment in op. 45 is
the fluctuating harmonic ground on which the baritone stands in bars 8–21
of the Triumphlied’s third movement before a re-transitional passage ushers
in D major. The choral theme that begins thereafter (“Hieß Treu und
Wahrhaftig”) similarly matches the vivid and vigorous C minor vivace
from the middle of the Requiem’s sixth movement. At this point in the
Triumphlied, an “apocalyptic Rider” appears: not one of the horrific horse-
men portrayed in Cornelius’s painting, but rather one who “makes war and
judges in righteousness (Revelation 19:11), from whose “mouth comes a
sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them
with a rod of iron,” and whose name is inscribed “King of kings and Lord
of lords.” At the moment when the rider’s first appellation, “Treu und
Wahrhaftig,” is announced (he receives many between verses 11 and 17),
Brahms unleashes a torrent of militaristic writing that is heard nowhere else
in his music.
A comparison of this passage’s function with that of the aforementioned
C minor choral episode from movement six of the Requiem gets to the heart
of the Triumphlied’s hard sell to modern audiences. As I discussed in the
previous chapter, the text in the C minor episode from the sixth movement
of the Requiem (bars 82–104 and again at 127–204) conveys the transfor-
mation of the dead and the living into the immortal inhabitants of God’s ev-
erlasting Kingdom. Appropriately, Brahms executes a striking set of modu-
lations there to transform C minor to C major through the choir’s upward
chromatic octaves from C-sharp to E-flat on the word “Tod,” and on to E
natural at the word “Hölle” in bar 159. Significantly for a comparison with
the third movement of the Triumphlied, that striking passage from the sixth
movement of the Requiem is integrally connected with an earlier arresting
event, namely, the three-step sequential ascent to an E-flat harmony at bars
67–76, the original entrance into the C-minor choral episode (see exs. 3.3
and 3.4 in the preceding chapter). As those events in the Requiem drive the
music forward to its resplendent goal, the C major fugue, they provide
everything we expect of Brahms and everything we value in him as a com-
poser. This is music that is strongly linear and goal oriented, and moves
confidently and logically through a complex set of harmonic and motivic re-
lationships to reach a satisfying conclusion.
On the surface, there are several similarities between this material and the
“Treu und Wahrhaftig” material beginning in bar 22 of the third movement
of op. 55; both present a mixture of forte unison and part writing for the
chorus, frequently doubled by winds, along with driving arpeggio figures in
130 Brahms and the German Spirit

the strings. But whereas the former passage serves a long-range function
within its movement and within the Requiem generally, this passage in the
Triumphlied is formally static. Having attained the tonic (D) major to re-
solve the dissonance of the movement’s opening in D minor and F major,
this passage veers off constantly toward F-sharp minor, the loosely ex-
pressed key of the ensuing section on the text “Und er tritt die Kelter des
Weins” (bars 71–93). If anything, the “Treu und Wahrhaftig” music re-
gresses when it veers to the key of the mediant, losing whatever tonic tonal
ground it had gained from the tonally unstable opening of the movement
(bars 1–21).
In its own right, however, this “Treu und Wahrhaftig” music is every bit
as effective as the C minor material in the Requiem. Nowhere is the martial
theme of the piece made so musically explicit as here with the motoric gal-
loping rhythm of the strings, the sixteenth-note string flourishes (bars 40,
42, etc.), and the ubiquitous trumpet fanfares (bars 23, 25, etc.). Even the
dotted figures that dominate the rest of the piece are highlighted here in the
setting of the words “mit Gerechtigkeit,” which are—more often than not—
set to hemiolas as in bars 27–29, or in the extended sequence of bars 32–40
that bring the first sentence of this section to a half cadence. Brahms extends
this material for another thirty bars, constantly veering toward the sharp
side: once to V (A major, bar 40) and twice to V of iii (C-sharp major from
bar 56 on and bars 68–71). The eventual half cadence in bar 71 to a C-sharp
dominant chord sounds less like an arrival than a detour. In other words,
this material does not develop musically so much as it redirects its fury.
What truly develops in this music is its jingoistic intensity, and it is here
that Triumphlied becomes dangerous, even threatening. What had appeared
as militaristic enthusiasm at the beginning of this section deteriorates into
wild-eyed fanaticism when the various martial motives (fanfares, homo-
rhythmic unison choral statements, and string flourishes) cease to occur in a
predictable, rational order but pile up instead. Originally, these three ele-
ments worked together in a balanced presentation of phrases. First, at bars
22–25, the trumpet fanfares serve a clear punctuating role in the second bar
of the men’s, then the women’s, statement of “Treu und Wahrhaftig.” When
that material returns in bars 40–46, those statements (now by the combined
choirs) are introduced by string flourishes and are extended for an extra bar
(44–45) against an elongated trumpet fanfare. After a further development
of the “mit Gerechtigkeit” hemiolas (bars 49–56), now leading to the first
half cadence on C-sharp, Brahms leads back to D major and the constituent
martial elements beginning in bar 59. Here, however, they pile up atop one
another (with the timpani added anew) out of sequence and, perhaps, out of
control. Harmonically as well, the “Treu und Wahrhaftig” motive has taken
on a more ominous tone; it now ends on an F-sharp minor chord as opposed
 The Triumphlied and the Apocalyptic Moment 131

to the more decisive-sounding tonic or dominant (D or A major) to which it

had cadenced in the earlier statements. The tendency toward C-sharp, then,
is foreshadowed in the reconfiguration of the theme itself, which never turns
back toward D major, sliding instead toward another cadence to C-sharp
major on the way to the key of F-sharp minor in the ensuing period of the
movement. To reiterate, this sounds less like an arrival at a goal than it does
a diversion to dwell on something darker and more problematic than the
ebullient D major in which the “Treu und Wahrhaftig” began. Appropri-
ately, the text in this segment of movement three accentuates the violence of
the rider on the white horse: “He will tread the winepress of the fury of the
wrath of God the Almighty.”
If the prospect of Brahms composing music that lacked a classical frame-
work or clear sense of direction causes discomfort by going against the grain
of our stylistic expectations, to hear his music threatening to lose control as
it does in these bars is downright frightening. It is not merely the violence of
the musical material that disturbs here, for Brahms certainly matched the
sheer volume and driving force of this figuration in other works: in addition
to the C minor material from the sixth movement of the Requiem, one could
count the dirge opening of movement two in that work, the allegro middle
portion of the Schicksalslied (also in C minor), countless moments in the
Gesang der Parzen (such as the orchestral introduction), and a host of pas-
sages in the symphonies. In each of those instances, however, musical vio-
lence might be heard as a means to some nobler end, be it the edifying point
of the texts in op. 54 and 89, or the eventual breakthrough to the relative
major keys in the two examples from op. 45. In the Triumphlied, however,
our prejudices necessarily prevent us from hearing the violence in the same
way. Already in Brahms’s day, the specter of a militarily and industrially
powerful German state in central Europe was a threat to its neighbors. Since
1945 our associations with such militant strains in the name of the Reich are
all the more problematic. It may be impossible to hear the violence in these
bars as a musical posture or an imaginative response to a text, as we might
hear it in the other works just listed. More upsetting still is to hear these
strains coming from Brahms, the antipode to Wagner and the rational pur-
veyor of the detached, classicizing style in late-nineteenth-century German
music. If even he could descend into the roar of the rabble, what is safe in
German art? One might also fear how this reflects on Brahms’s other seem-
ingly rhetorical outbursts. How innocent are they after all? To what extent
are they also manifestations of the German imperial tone? This is not our
Brahms. And so the Triumphlied must be branded an aberration, and we
can ascribe the powerful effects of the piece on listeners reported by contem-
poraneous critics as a mere side effect of the audiences’ patriotic euphoria,
not a genuine aesthetic response to the music. Going further in his seminal
132 Brahms and the German Spirit

1959 study of Brahms’s choral music, Siegfried Kross projects that attitude
onto the composer himself, asserting that it derives less from an artistic than
from a patriotic impulse.51
To be sure, the patriotic impetus behind the work influenced its com-
positional style, and our post-1945 discomfort is largely based on the very
notion of a nationalistic German work celebrating a Prussian military vic-
tory. But there is a larger issue at stake here than one occasional work by a
canonical composer. Brahms’s sober, goal-oriented, and complex musical
language is celebrated not only for aesthetic reasons but for political ones as
well. For these are the things that separate him from composers whose style
more neatly accommodated German nationalist ideologies, namely, Wagner
and Bruckner. I would in no way suggest that the Triumphlied sounds any-
thing like a piece by one of those composers. (And for what it is worth,
Wagner is known to have despised the work.) On the contrary, it sounds
very much like Brahms—just without the surrounding context. But the lack
of complex motivic relationships, the lack of a classicizing frame, the broad
brush with which Brahms casts his ideas in the Triumphlied threaten our
modern concept of Brahms’s cultural meaning. In coming to terms with how
the Triumphlied fails musically to meet our expectations (not simply why
we are repelled by its politics), we become ever more aware of the political
significance of Brahms’s music, beyond the political context of one anoma-
lous piece.
 C H A
5 P T E R

Gebet Einer König: National Prayers in

the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, Op. 109

Community and Polychorality

Brahms never wavered from the patriotism he displayed in the Triumphlied.
Over the last quarter century of his life he continued to revel in the events of
1870–71, acquiring numerous books on the war, collections of Bismarck’s
speeches and letters, and various other works related to the Reich. Writing
of Brahms’s last days, Kalbeck claims that Brahms “could never get enough
of newly published books about the war and victory of 1870–71,” and
writes of the Bismarck calendar that Clara Simrock had sent Brahms for
Christmas 1896. Brahms wrote her husband, Karl Simrock, that “my own
[Bismarck calendar] was horrible and every page made me angry at the year;
it was a Hamburg product, and every day it gave a daily menu and lousy
verses, [only] a pair of Bismarck quotes per month—but this calendar is
solid Berlin and pure Bismarck. Every morning it revives me to be greeted by
a word from him.”1
But for all of his veneration of Bismarck and the Reich, Brahms never
again expressed his national pride so overtly in his music as he had in
op. 55. Instead, he publicly displayed his connection to the German culture
of which the Kaiserreich was a political culmination and manifestation
by overcoming his long silence in the field of the symphony. Brahms had
already mastered large-scale instrumental forms by composing a variety of
chamber works—the String Sextets, opp. 18 and 36; the Piano Quartets,
opp. 24 and 25; the Piano Quintet, op. 34; and the Horn Trio, op. 40—all
composed between 1859 and 1865. The Triumphlied itself may be seen
as one in a series of pieces by which Brahms worked his way in measured
steps toward symphonic composition. Along with Ein deutsches Requiem,
the Alto Rhapsody, Rinaldo (op. 50 of 1869), and the Schicksalslied, the
Triumphlied gave Brahms valuable experience in writing for the orchestra.
134 Brahms and the German Spirit

Last in this lineage was the orchestral version of the Variations for Orches-
tra on a Theme of Haydn, op. 56a, 1874 (simultaneously published in a
two-piano version as op. 56b). Only two years later, Brahms finally com-
pleted the symphony his followers had anticipated since Schumann’s “Neue
Bahnen” essay of 1853 spoke of “veiled symphonies” in the piano pieces
and called for Brahms to write for “the power and masses of the choir and
orchestra.” And by 1877 a second symphony (D major, op. 73) followed
quickly on the heels of the first.
Brahms’s arrival on the symphonic scene in the 1870s was timely; it
was during this decade that the genre made a comeback, as new German
symphonies were being composed in large numbers for the first time since
the 1840s. The reasons for this resurgence are debatable, but nearly all com-
mentators agree that the symphonies that Brahms and Bruckner composed
during the 1870s eclipsed the efforts of their immediate predecessors in
the genre: Hiller, Raff, Reinecke, and others. (The resurgence was also fu-
eled by non-Germans writing in the Austro-Germanic symphonic tradition,
most notably Tchaikovsky, who had composed his first four symphonies by
1878 and popularized them on his many successful conducting tours of Eu-
rope during that decade.) Reinhold Brinkmann suggests that the drop and
subsequent rise in the numbers of German symphonies may be partly a
consequence of political events in Germany from 1848 to 1871, a fallow
period between the failed revolutions of the former date and the latter year
of unification.2 Although it is difficult to find a direct cause and effect, this
thesis has much merit, for only after the German concert-going public had
a sense of itself as a national community could the symphony regain its
Beethovenian “society-forming” function—to use Paul Bekker’s famous for-
mulation.3
Beethoven wrote his symphonies during the initial decades of the German
drive toward national unity, and thus they were directed more to a perceived
humanistic community than a distinct nation (however much German na-
tionalism was tied up in a neo-humanist revival in the early nineteenth cen-
tury).4 Theodor Adorno labels those works “orations to mankind, designed
by a demonstration of the law of their life, to bring men to an uncon-
scious consciousness of the unity otherwise hidden in the individual’s diffuse
existence.”5 Adorno’s slight change in nomenclature—he speaks of the sym-
phony’s “community-forming” (Gemeinschaftbildend) effect—may reflect
the slightly later vantage point than Bekker’s from which he viewed the
social history of the symphony. In the second half of the twentieth century,
Adorno was all too aware of “how deeply the humanity and universality
of music entwine with the national element they are transcending” in the
Austro-German tradition.6 Thus to him, as opposed to Bekker, writing half
a century earlier, the symphony creates not only a sense of society but also
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 135

one of community—and (at one level) a community that is specifically na-

tional. Brahms entered the symphonic stage at the moment when this dis-
tinction became not simply meaningful but imperative. Just as the con-
struction of monuments in the Kaiserreich was “like a confession of faith
repeated again and again” to “conjure up something which, obviously, did
not exist to a sufficient degree” (to revisit Reinhard Alings’s statement,
quoted in the previous chapter), the community-forming role of the sym-
phony in post-1871 Germany served a national-confirming purpose for its
audience. Having built a national consciousness on the strengths of their
cultural traditions in the first half of the nineteenth century, German
concertgoers saw the political achievement of the nation newly reflected in
the “second age” of the symphony after 1871.7
Walter Frisch traces the social function of Brahms’s symphonies back to
Ein deutsches Requiem. Although he argues that “for the composer the lan-
guage and culture were less important than the larger message of comfort
and faith” that bespeaks a secular humanism, Frisch nevertheless recognizes
that Brahms reached across religious boundaries to an “intended audience
that was the broader society that shared his native tongue and culture.”8
That Brahms would choose to achieve this effect through a choral work, no
less one based on sacred texts (whatever their humanistic cachet), points to
the important linking of the Lutheran religious liturgy with mass music
making in the formation of a national communal identity. Even the secular
works that fall between the Requiem and the Triumphlied play into this par-
adigm by evoking the historic religious aura of choral singing. Compared,
however, with the symphonies and the large-scale choral-orchestral works
of the early 1870s (op. 54 and 55) and early 1880s (op. 83 and 89), the
works Brahms produced during this period included little in the way of a
cappella choral music, less still in the sacred area. Even the two impressive
motets of op. 74, “Warum ist das Licht gegeben den Mühseligen” and “O
Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf,” were constructed largely from preexisting
material.9 And whereas one can make a case for the national import of
works such as these that so strongly refer to the legacy of Bach, there is
nothing overtly political about them.
Not until the late 1880s would Brahms once again use large choral forces
to express his political outlook. In 1889 he produced two separate collec-
tions of sacred a cappella works: the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, op. 109, and
Drei Motteten, op. 110. The former set comprised three ceremonial settings
of biblical texts; the latter included one on biblical texts (no. 1, “Ich aber bin
elend”) and two on Kirchenlieder (no. 2, “Ach, arme Welt,” and no. 3,
“Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein”). A clear link between these two collec-
tions is the normative use of a cappella eight-voice polychoral writing, a
new format for Brahms. (Only op. 110, no. 2, is set for a single, four-voice
136 Brahms and the German Spirit

choir.) In opp. 109 and 110, polychoral writing is one compositional means
by which he reflects the plural voice or references to a community that oc-
cur in most of the texts through phrases such as “Unsere Väter,” “ein
Haus,” “ein jeglich’ Reich,” “unser Gott,” and “Wenn wir in höchsten
Nöten sein.”10 Brahms’s choice of communally oriented texts indicates his
concern around that time for the “community” that was the German Reich,
as events in German politics colored his previously chauvinistic attitude to-
ward Germany with a feeling of urgency bordering on despair.
From the start, Brahms seems to have conceived of and referred to
opp. 109 and 110 as a pair. That assertion runs contrary to the widely held
notion that the Fest- und Gedenksprüche were written first, probably during
1888–89, and that only then did Brahms compose op. 110. He gave a manu-
script score of op. 109 to Theodor Billroth in April 1889 and sent another to
Hans von Bülow in Hamburg a month later for performance in a music fes-
tival there the following September. The first explicit mention of the op. 110
motets comes slightly later, when Brahms offers them to Simrock in a letter
of 13 June 1889 as a companion set to op. 109. But an earlier reference to
some of the late motets casts this accepted chronology into doubt. In a letter
of 11 May 1889, Franz Wüllner asks Brahms whether he would be inter-
ested in contributing “one or the other of the new eight-voice works” to
a collection of works for five to sixteen voices which Wüllner planned to
publish as the next installment of his Chorübungen.11 We do not know
when or how Wüllner came to know of these works before writing this let-
ter, but this earliest reference suggests that Brahms had begun, or perhaps
even completed, the op. 110 motets before sending the score of the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche to Billroth a few weeks later in May. Brahms continues to
mention the two collections as a pair in a number of subsequent letters to
Simrock, and in February 1890, opp. 109 and 110 were published together
according to the composer’s wishes.12
Taken together, opp. 109 and 110 have generally been understood as a
heiter und dunkel pair, like so many opera in Brahms’s middle and later peri-
ods. The op. 110 motets paint a consistent picture of gloom, marked as they
are by their minor-mode chromatic lines and generally dense textures, and
by a seemingly unending litany of distress through words such as “elend,”
“Wehe,” “Leiden,” “Not,” “eitel,” “sorgen,” “Rettung,” “Angst,” and
“Trübsal.” Most of these occur in the context of calling for God’s help. In-
deed, the first two motets end with prayers (“Gott deine Hilfe schütze mich”
in no. 1, and “Hilf mir Herr zum Frieden” in no. 2), as does the end of the
first verse in no. 3 (“Wir . . . dich rufen an, o treuer Gott, um Rettung aus
der Angst und Not”). On the other side of the coin are the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, which are musically characterized by their predominantly
bright major-mode and diatonic writing, leading most writers to describe
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 137

them as celebratory, radiant, and “festive,” as their name would suggest.

And although their texts are hardly as effusive or full of praise to God as the
patriotic Triumphlied, they are often cited as a similarly positive statement
of Brahms’s patriotic zeal.
What many commentators fail to observe in the texts of op. 109, how-
ever, are the oblique calls for God’s help, not unlike those in op. 110:
“Unsere Väter hofften auf dich”; “schrien sie” (no. 1); “zu dem Götter also
nahe sich tun als der Herr, unser Gott, so oft wir ihn anrufen.” (no. 3). If we
consider the Fest- und Gedenksprüche in this light, we become more aware
of words such as “hoffen,” “schrien,” “erretten,” “bewahren,” “rufen,”
and “hüten,” words that convey a feeling of danger and need which is not so
far removed from the distress of the op. 110 motets. Our present prayers are
not yet answered in op. 109: we know only that God answered the prayers
of “Unsere Väter,” not that He will come to our aid. Therefore, despite the
apparent contrasts between these two opera, they share an underlying simi-
larity in outlook (if not in musical character) which speaks directly to the
generally communal and religious imagery of their texts. More than any
other works by Brahms, these pieces convey a national community that is
bound by its Lutheran heritage.
Ironically, the event that is usually cited as the impetus for Brahms’s
expression of positive patriotic feelings in the Fest- und Gedenksprüche,
namely, the so-called Drei-Kaiser-Jahr of 1888, probably prompted Brahms
to select texts that expressed prayers for help in all of the late motets. I have
already cited, in Chapter 2, Max Kalbeck’s account of how Brahms was
troubled by the deaths of Kaisers Wilhelm I and Friedrich in 1888, and by
the strife between Bismarck and the young new successor, Wilhelm II, in
that year. As I posited there, Brahms apparently selected a group of six bibli-
cal passages at that time as a response to the crisis that the difficult transfer
of power posed to the German Republic. He copied those texts onto folios
15v–19r in his pocket notebook of biblical texts (see Chapter 2). The most
poignant of these texts is Wisdom of Solomon 9:1–12 (18v–19r), in which
“Solomon” delivers a formal and formulaic prayer to God for the strength
and wisdom he will need to lead his “Volk.” Verse 7, “You have chosen me
to be king of your people and to be judge over your sons and daughters,”
strongly supports Kalbeck’s contention that with this text, Brahms was re-
ferring to the newly crowned Kaiser Wilhelm II.
When Brahms composed opp. 109 and 110, however, he used none of the
newly selected texts on folios 15v–19r. Instead, he turned back to others
that he had copied onto folios 13r–15v of his notebook sometime earlier.
That pool of texts is listed in fig. 2.4. Significantly, he seems to have rejected
some of the more positive endings he had originally considered for these
previously compiled texts, opting instead to bring out a sense of praying to
138 Brahms and the German Spirit

God for help in both opera. “Ich aber bin elend” (op. 110, no. 1), for exam-
ple, contains two texts that seem originally to have been conceived in con-
junction with some of the texts that were used for the “Warum” motet,
op. 74, no. 1, of 1877 (James 5:11 and Lamentations 3:41), based on the
proximity of all the texts on folio 13r in the notebook. When he eventually
composed “Ich aber bin elend” with texts from that page, Brahms envel-
oped the longer passage from Exodus 34:6–7 (“Herr, Herr Gott, barmherzig
und gnädig”) with the two lines from Psalm 69:30 (“Ich aber bin elend und
mir ist weh, Gott deine Hilfe schütze mich”). In his notebook of biblical
texts, however, the more faith-affirming lines from Exodus originally fol-
lowed the darker thoughts of Psalm 69, and thus the call for God’s help
would not necessarily have ended the motet. And whereas the eventual tex-
tual configuration of op. 110, no. 1, mitigates the despair of the Psalm 69
text by setting a view of God as “barmherzig, geduldig und gnädig” in its
midst, it nevertheless focuses attention on prayer by placing the words
“Gott deine Hilfe schütze mich” at the end of the motet, where they are mu-
sically extended for eighteen bars. Furthermore, Brahms had originally con-
sidered a more positive passage with which to conclude this work (or some
prototype made up of texts on folio 13r), Hebrews 4:16, which is copied
at the top of folio 13v. That passage suggests a more hopeful stance than
any to be found in op. 110 or 109: “Let us therefore approach the throne
of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to
help in time of need.” The optimism supplied by God’s “Gnade” and
“Barmherzigkeit” in Exodus 34 is joined in this passage with the call for
his “Hülfe” from Psalm 69. The text that Brahms fashioned by 1889 for
op. 110, no. 1, however, lacks such an explicit synthesis, leaving us less con-
fident about the effectiveness of its concluding prayer. That text displays a
considerably greater sense of Elend and urgency than at least one possibility
he had considered earlier.
A similar situation pertains to the texts of op. 109, which are all found—
among other texts—on the next opening of the notebook (13v–14r).
Whether these were copied into the notebook around the same time as the
texts of op. 74, no. 1 (as Siegfried Kross has suggested), or sometime later,
they were almost certainly selected before Brahms set them to music in the
aftermath of the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr (1888).13 Like the text of op. 110, no. 1,
the larger group to which the op. 109 texts belong seems to continue onto
the top of the following page (14v), where the group is concluded by a pas-
sage from Genesis 28:16–17. Just as the Hebrews 4 text on folio 13v could
have provided a more positive ending to op. 110, no. 1, than the call for
God’s help in Psalm 69, likewise the tone of Isaac’s revelation from Genesis
28 is decidedly more upbeat than Moses’ admonition to the “Volk” of Israel
in the Deuteronomy 4 text with which Brahms actually concluded op. 109:
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 139

Deuteronomy 4:9 But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as

folio 14v neither to forget the things your eyes have seen nor to let
(actual conclusion them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make
of op. 109, no. 3) them known to your children and your children’s
children.
Genesis 28:17, 22 “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know
folio 14r it!” / “How awesome is this place! This is none other
(not set) than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. /
And this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be
God’s house.”

As in the text of op. 110, no. 1, Brahms ended the Fest- und Gedenksprüche
with a far less optimistic Spruch than the evidence in his biblical notebook
suggests he might have, one which cannot fully reassure those who were
“hoping,” “crying,” and “calling out” for God’s help in the texts of op. 109.
Brahms’s reasons for focusing on prayers of deliverance in the late motets
could perhaps be attributed to the general melancholy that most modern
Brahms scholars understand to cast a shadow over the entire later period of
his life.14 But we have already seen firm evidence in the prayerful address
to God contained in Wisdom of Solomon 9:1–12 (which Brahms himself
labeled “Gebet eines Königs” in the biblical notebook), that repeatedly call-
ing for God’s help in prayer was a more specific response to the national
“tragedy” of 1888. When Brahms composed the Fest- und Gedenksprüche
around 1889, he could not look past his doubts and concerns about the fu-
ture of the Kaiserreich, even though he employed a group of texts that had
been copied when the German Republic’s political fortunes seemed clearer
and brighter. Thus his need for prayer found its way into his selection of spe-
cific texts from that group and, as we shall see, into the musical style of the
Fest- und Gedenksprüche as well. The net result in op. 109 (and op. 110) is
an ambivalent mixture of faith and hope on the one hand, and uncertainty
and urgency on the other.
Why did Brahms turn from such a distinctly individualistic response
to the political events of 1888 as the “Gebet eines Königs” to the primar-
ily pluralistic texts that he ultimately used in op. 109? One impetus for
the switch may have been musical, namely, Brahms’s documented interest
in polychoral music during the late 1880s.15 Brahms copied numerous pas-
sages from Heinrich Schütz’s settings of the Passions and Psalms into
the manuscript collection Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde A 130 after those
pieces were published by Philipp Spitta as volumes one and two of Schütz’s
complete works in 1885 and 1886, respectively.16 Virginia Hancock has
ably demonstrated the many ways in which the three Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, along with “Ich aber bin elend,” borrow techniques from
140 Brahms and the German Spirit

the Schütz Abschriften of the late 1880s. She concludes that the apparent
“elemental grandeur” of op. 109 masks Brahms’s use of sophisticated com-
positional techniques in those pieces as compared with the explicit contra-
puntal intricacies of the op. 110 motets.17
Another reason why the complexities in the Fest- und Gedenksprüche
are not so evident as they are in the op. 110 motets is that the handling of
the polychoral texture is more sophisticated in op. 109. In op. 110 Brahms
treats the choral texture differently in each motet, and he even changes
the relationship of the two choirs from section to section within a single
piece like “Ich aber bin elend.” Finding so much variety in choral technique
among these motets is no surprise, since they form a decidedly varied set
to begin with; a four-voice motet (“Ach, arme Welt”) appears between
a through-composed double-choir motet on biblical texts (“Ich aber bin
elend”) and a strophic double-choir motet on a Kirchenlied (“Wenn wir in
höchsten Nöten sein”). Only in the latter piece does Brahms display the
same sophistication in the handling of polychoral texture that distinguish
the Fest- und Gedenkspruche. Although “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten
sein,” like the other two numbers in op. 110, conjures up the sound of the
German seventeenth century, it is perhaps closer in spirit to the Fest- und
Gedenkspruche than its opus mates. The similarity has less to do with me-
lodic, rhythmic, or harmonic language than with the equally sure handling
of polychoral textures in each. From the outset of op. 110, no. 3, Brahms
handles the two choirs with great subtlety (see ex. 5.1). After the two choirs
delineate themselves through an “echo” phrase to the textual incipit (bars
1–3), individual voices from each choir introduce the next line of text (“und
wissen nicht, wo aus und ein”) to the same head motive in staggered en-
trances (bars 3–6). Before these fragmented melodies conclude in bars 6–7,
the second choir has recommenced with the initial phrase, but now contin-
ues along with the first choir’s echo (bars 8–9).
Brahms’s use of the two choirs in op. 110, no. 1, is far less suave. The
opening period of the piece creates the effect of one five-voice choir (or per-
haps two successive five-voice choirs), first blending both soprano 1 lines
with all the men’s voices, then both second bass lines with all the women’s
voices (see ex. 5.2). When Brahms suddenly introduces two distinct choirs in
bars 17–34 of op. 110, no. 1, he does so in order to articulate two separate
communal identities. As nearly every commentator on this motet has noted,
these bars evoke responsorial psalm singing, a context that implicitly re-
quires two separate groups.18 The effectiveness of polychoral texture to ex-
press a communal voice is all the more pronounced in op. 110, no. 1, for at
no point does the text of that motet mention a plural voice. The only protag-
onist that is made clear in the text is the Ich at the beginning and the end of
the work (“Ich aber bin elend . . . schütze mich”). We are left, perhaps, to
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 141

   
und wis -sen nicht wo aus und

   f      p 
     
             
     


  
Wenn wir in höch -sten Nö - ten sein p und wis -sennicht, wo

     
     
in höch -sten Nö - ten sein

          p 
          
        
f und wis -sen

     
f

   
      

 
Wenn wir in höch sten Nö - ten sein

      
       
f

6

ein und wis - sen nicht

          
              
     
aus und ein, wo aus und ein

 
  
und wis - sen nicht

      
            
      
        
 
nicht wo aus und ein, wo aus und ein,

     

       

poco f

   
und wis-sen nicht wo aus und ein, und fin - den we - der

p
            
p
      
          
          
poco f
und wis - sen nicht wo aus

9
    
 
und fin - den we - der Hilf noch Rat,

 
poco f
     
   
   
     

ob
      

wir


gleich


sor


-

       

Hilf noch Rat, fin - den we - der Hilf noch Rat,

 
  
    

     
       
  
wed'r Hilf noch Rat,

Example 5.1 Op. 110, no. 3, “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein,” bars 1–11.
142 Brahms and the German Spirit

Choirs 1 and 2 sopranos

1
   f         
      
Ich a - ber bin e - lend, und mir ist we - he, we -
Choir 1 men und mir ist we -
      
f                
  
 

Ich a - ber bin e - lend, e - lend, und mir ist we - he,

e - lend, und mir ist we - - - he,
        
 
f
               
     
Ich a - ber bin e - - lend, und mir ist we - he,
Choir 2 men

6 Choir 1 women Ich a - ber bin e - lend,

       
f
         

        
f
he,
Ich a - ber bin e -
- - -


he, we - he,
    
    
  
we - - he,
mir ist we - he;
           
   
we - he,

Choir 1 women Ich a - ber bin e - lend,

       
f
         

      
f
Ich a - ber bin e -
- - -
Ich a - ber bin e - lend, Ich a - ber bin e - -
 f
                  
          
Choir 2 women f Ich a - ber bin e - lend, ich a - ber bin


f  
        

Ich a - ber bin e - lend,
Choirs 1 and 2 basses

Example 5.2 Op. 110, no. 1, “Ich aber bin elend,” bars 1–11. (Sopranos, then
basses, of respective choirs separated off for illustrative purposes.)
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 143

wonder why Brahms chose to evoke communality in op. 110, no. 1, at all.
The answer likely lies in Brahms’s twofold preoccupation in the late 1880s
with polychoral music and with the troubled community of the German na-
tion. There is not a clear “cause-and-effect” relationship between the two
factors, but they seem to have become closely related for Brahms and led to
a distinct mode of presentation in the late sacred choral works. What is clear
is that Brahms’s employment of polychorality to evoke a communal voice
formed a continuous thread in his later choral music.

Brahms and the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr

“They are three short hymn-like sayings for eight-voice choir a cappella,
which are specifically intended for national Festival and Commemorative
days, and which would be especially well suited and expressive for Leipzig,
Sedan, and Kaiser Coronation festivals. (Then again better not [Doch besser
nicht]!)”19 With these words, Brahms offered the Fest- und Gedenksprüche
to Hans von Bülow and made the nationalistic impulse of the works quite
clear. The publication by Kalbeck of Brahms’s letter and Kalbeck’s own
commentary on the Gedenksprüche in 1914 in his Brahms biography began
a long reception history in which op. 109 has been interpreted as a patriotic
companion piece to the earlier Triumphlied, op. 55 (1872). For works that
are so uniformly perceived as patriotic, the Fest- und Gedenksprüche con-
tain relatively few words that would connote either a nation or a political
state. Some potential referents to things national or political were aban-
doned when Brahms turned away from the newly selected biblical passages
on folios 15v–19r of his notebook for op. 109 and returned to texts from fo-
lios 13v–14r instead. Wisdom of Solomon 9 (18v–19r), for example, speaks
repeatedly of “laws” and “ruling”: the word “Thron“ occurs three times.
And 1 Kings 6:11–12 (15v) focuses on the building of “Gottes Haus” and
following His “rules.” The only text that Brahms ultimately used in op. 109
which presents anything political or national is Jesus’ metaphor from Luke
11:17 in the middle section of no. 2 (bars 31–51). There a “Reich” is men-
tioned, but it is associated with something distinctly negative: a kingdom
that is brought down and laid waste when it is divided against itself. Brahms
figuratively surrounds this Reich with a “starker Gewappneter“ (strongly
armed man) by setting Luke 11:21 with nearly identical music to begin and
end no. 2. Despite being flanked by a more positive image, however, the
troubled image of the Reich falls in the absolute center of the three works—
the middle section of the middle piece—and thus forms a dark core to the
entire opus
A more positive—though less direct—idea of patriotism is derived from
the national imagery of Volk and ancestry in the first and last of the Fest-
144 Brahms and the German Spirit

und Gedenksprüche. Brahms begins the set with the basically reassuring ob-
servation that when our fathers prayed to God, their prayers were answered
(a signal of faith), and ends with a charge to the present Volk to pass on
their history to their children and grandchildren (a signal of hope). The jux-
taposition of “Reich” and “Volk” creates a critical tension in op. 109, since
these two concepts represent opposing strands of German patriotism in the
late nineteenth century, pitting a Volk-centered and religious view of nation-
alism in contradistinction to a state-centered and legalistic one. That differ-
ence became a major dividing line between conservatives and liberals in the
Kaiserreich.20 It is very difficult to distinguish the meaning of words such as
Staat, Reich, Volk, and Nation in the nineteenth century. Around 1800, the
idea of a new German state was closely bound to the legacy of the medieval
Heiliges Römischer Reich deutscher Nation. That concept of Staat con-
tained, ironically, many characteristics that would come by mid-century to
be associated with the German Volk: a powerful spiritual force whose divine
authority could be traced back through the history of Christianity. While
Nation and Volk gradually took on this meaning during the first half of
the nineteenth century, the idealized reestablishment of a powerful German
political state continued to occupy the patriotic movement. Indeed, it is
nearly impossible to separate nineteenth-century Germans’ longing for such
a “kingdom” from the purely Christian notion of a godly inner Reich that
unites all of God’s chosen people.21
One explanation for this mixture of religious and patriotic aspirations is
the active role played by the Protestant Church in the burgeoning nationalist
movement at the turn of the century. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the leading
Protestant theologian of the early nineteenth century, openly equated the
German patriotic cause with a “new religion,” thereby building on a long-
standing Pietistic tradition in which the Prussian state was “sanctified” and
“increasingly viewed as the embodiment of the true Church” and as the
earthly forerunner of God’s Kingdom.22 For the Romantics, religion and na-
tionalism were inextricably linked. Brahms’s choice of an apocalyptic bibli-
cal text for the Triumphlied was related directly to this “Pieto-Romantic”
outlook and reflects his own position within the nineteenth century. He was
born in 1833, midway between the dissolution of the German Kingdom by
Franz II in 1806 and the revival of the German state in 1871, and he grew
up in Hamburg, a city that had suffered severe economic and physical con-
sequences of the wars of liberation from France in 1815. Brahms’s personal
circumstances practically dictated a deep-seated patriotism and a particular
dislike for modern France; it is not surprising that he reacted with a mixture
of pride and glee to the victory over France at the Sedan and chose such a
celebratory text as Revelations 19 to mark the occasion.
By comparison, Brahms’s selection of texts for the Fest- und
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 145

Gedenksprüche signals a change in his attitude toward the modern Reich by

the late 1880s. It is significant that Brahms did not choose the sort of con-
temporary patriotic texts for op. 109 that were so commonly set for na-
tional festivals around that time. His use of the Bible to express a less opti-
mistic view of Germany’s political situation has to be read as a (mostly
negative) comment on the more positive role that Scripture had played in
the formation of the Romantic nationalism that set the stage for the attain-
ment of the Kaiserreich.
Toward the end of the century, German patriotism’s spiritual legacy be-
longed to the Volk, while the state became a largely bureaucratic and legalis-
tic entity. The establishment of the Prussian Reich had largely satisfied the
liberal agenda for national unity. Conservatives, however, sought a more or-
ganic realization of German unity, one in which the state was subservient to
the mystical will of the Volk. They did not feel that this could come about
under the present regime, and hoped instead for a nationalism that was less
legalistic and more moralistic, less concerned with politics and more con-
cerned with spirit, less bureaucratic and more ritualistic. A typical expres-
sion of this attitude is found in the writings of Paul de Lagarde, who desired
the establishment of a “national German religion” that would recapture the
true essence of Christianity, stripped of the Jewish and Roman elements that
had corrupted German Protestantism.23 In particular, Lagarde objected to
the legalisms of Old Testament religion, including the idea of a “covenant,”
which he found demeaning to the spiritual relationship between God and
humanity.
Such disdain for laws and covenants is a separate issue from Brahms’s
own aversion to religious dogma and orthodoxy. A survey of the biblical
texts Brahms copied into his notebook reveals that he did not reject the con-
cept of laws and the legalistic, political character of the Bible. On the con-
trary, he dwelled on them.24 Many of the texts there speak directly or indi-
rectly of God’s laws, and frequently of the Ten Commandments, which
symbolized the Jewish covenant from which Lagarde felt Christianity had to
be freed. In the “Gebet eines Königs” from Wisdom of Solomon 9, Solomon
prays for the wisdom to follow God’s “judgment” and “laws.” Similarly, in
Kings 6:11–12, God commands Solomon to maintain his “laws” and “com-
mandments.” Jacob’s revelation from Genesis 28 (14v) also represents the
passing on of God’s covenant from Abraham to Jacob through Isaac. Thus,
all three of these biblical passages emphasize the constancy and perpetua-
tion of God’s laws and commandments.25
Less explicit on this subject, but no less meaningful, is the text of op. 109,
no. 3, from Deuteronomy 4:7 and 9. These verses are spoken by Moses in
the midst of his appeal to the Israelites—his Volk—to follow God’s “stat-
utes,” “ordinances,” and “commandments.” The text that begins no. 3,
146 Brahms and the German Spirit

“For what other nation has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is when-
ever we call to him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7), is followed in the Bible by a direct
reference to God’s laws: “And what other great nation has statutes and ordi-
nances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?” (Deu-
teronomy 4:8). Brahms, as I have argued, had already limited his selection
to verses 7 and 9 before the crisis of 1888, probably several years before. We
can imagine that, had he copied this text into his biblical text notebook
later, he might have included verse 8 and thus made the reference to laws
more clear, as he did in 1 Kings 6 and Wisdom of Solomon 9, texts that were
copied into the pocket notebook as a reaction to the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr. The
various mentions of laws and statutes in these texts are not meant to stand
for the legal code of the German Empire. Rather, by dwelling on the trans-
mission of laws and commandments from generation to generation, Brahms
suggests that the Bible could stand for tradition and social continuity in a
historical context.
Insofar as that use of the Bible is a positive reception of Old Testament
laws, Brahms opposes reactionary rhetoric like Lagarde’s. At the same time,
statutes and laws evoke the legal aspects of a state, or Reich, and by combin-
ing the idea of the state, on the one hand, with the idea of social continuity
(or history), on the other, Brahms’s approach to the Bible resonates with
the late-nineteenth-century “national-liberal” school of history, in which
the Prussian state was accepted and even championed as the proper means
by which the aspirations of the German Volk could be realized. Two histori-
ans whose books Brahms owned were counted among the national liberals:
Heinrich von Treitschke and Heinrich von Sybel. Although they condemned
Bismarck’s strong-arm political tactics within the German Parliament,
Treitschke and Sybel nevertheless accepted the Bismarckian “power state”
as the proper vehicle for German unity and as a logical outcome of historical
development. Moreover, they saw the apparatus and processes of the state
as a necessary mechanism of political and social stability and “shied away
from the romantic probing of the obscure origins of custom and community
in the Volksgeist.”26 Treitschke, the more influential and widely read of the
two authors, is represented in Brahms’s library by two books: Historische
und Politische Aufsätze (1870) and Zwei Kaiser (1888).27 Whereas we have
no record of Brahms’s reaction to Treitschke’s writings, the publication
dates of these books suggest a connection between Brahms’s reading of
Treitschke’s national-liberal ideas and the two significant events in German
history that prompted the composer to write pieces on patriotic themes—
the founding of the Kaiserreich and the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr.
More direct information is available about what Brahms thought of Sybel.
Brahms’s friend Laura von Beckerath sent him the first volume of Sybel’s
Kleine historische Schriften as a Christmas gift in 1883, and sent a new vol-
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 147

ume of Sybel’s Begründung des deutschen Reichs durch Wilhelm I every

Christmas from 1889 through 1894. The latter volumes would have arrived
too late to have any impact on the Fest- und Gedenksprüche, but Brahms’s
reaction to them is nevertheless telling. In a letter to Beckerath in 1892
he writes: “It is especially nice that the volumes of our Kaisergeschichte al-
ways arrive from the Niederwald. And this time I must, with the greatest
pleasure, think of the great festival day, which I spent so happily with you
in your house. But I am not the least bit impatient for the seventieth volume!
In volumes 66–70 Sybel can hardly recite [erzählen] to me long enough.”28
The “great festival day” to which Brahms refers in this letter was 28 Sep-
tember 1883, which marked the completion and official unveiling of the
Niederwald Denkmal by Johannes Schilling at Rüdesheim. Schilling’s statue
of the goddess “Germania” was one of the many monuments erected in the
late nineteenth century that drew connections between the modern state and
Germany’s mythical past. Kalbeck waxes eloquent on Brahms’s deep emo-
tions upon seeing the newly finished Denkmal while visiting the Beckeraths.
And although Kalbeck may go too far in estimating how profound this
experience was for the composer, Brahms himself draws the connection be-
tween the monument and Sybel’s Kaisergeschichte when he says that the ar-
rival of the new volume by Sybel reminded him of the Denkmal’s commem-
oration, a day he remembered as “herzlich” and “schön.” We can infer from
this connection that Brahms agreed with Sybel’s historical interpretation of
German politics and shared his state-centered patriotism.
Brahms’s selected biblical quotations indicate his agreement with the state-
dominated historical nationalism of Treitschke and Sybel, and thereby his
opposition to the Volk-dominated religious nationalism of the right. Ortho-
dox or not, Brahms saw no need to supplant the Lutheran Church with a
national German religion. He expressed that sentiment by selecting a whole
series of biblical texts that deal with the very laws and covenants that
Lagarde sought to overcome with a new religion. Through this subtle act of
cultural criticism, we see Brahms clinging to the Lutheran Bible as the trans-
mitter of German culture.
Opus 109, Brahms told Bülow, “would be especially well suited and ex-
pressive for Leipzig, Sedan, and Kaiser Coronation festivals,” the three most
important national holidays of the German state. Modeled on the large pub-
lic celebrations of the French Revolution, festivals had arisen in Germany
during the first half of the nineteenth century to promote the idea of na-
tional unity.29 Initially, they incorporated a mixture of religious ritual and
folk symbolism to create what George L. Mosse has described as a “nation-
alist cult.”30 After 1871, the new empire attempted to use these festivals to
celebrate the Reich’s founding, and eventually settled on a commemoration
of the final military victory of the war with France, the Sedantag on 2 Sep-
148 Brahms and the German Spirit

tember. Along with the Kaiser’s birthday and other state-sponsored festivals,
however, the Sedantag met opposition from many of the groups that had led
the initial festival movement: gymnasts and sharpshooters to name two of
the most important. These groups began to hold their own festivals, in
which they fostered a separate form of nationalism from the one promoted
by the Wilhelmine government.31 Ultimately, because of this opposition, the
state’s festivals failed to inspire much patriotism or enthusiasm of any sort,
and became mere parades of military pomp and imperial aggrandizement.
Brahms’s closing aside “Doch besser nicht!” in the letter to Bülow proba-
bly alludes to the dubious position national festivals occupied by 1889. In
fact, op. 109 would have made perfectly appropriate music for such occa-
sions.32 For despite their secular pomp and regalia, most festivals around
this time included a church service, which would easily accommodate a
cappella settings of biblical texts. For example, a program for the Sedantag
celebration at Stuttgart in 1875 indicates that the main festival day began
with the chorale “Nun danket alle Gott” performed from the church tower
(probably by brass), followed by a large procession to the church, where the
Society for Classical Church Music and members of the Hofkapelle sang
“Hoch thut euch auf” from Handel’s Messiah.33
Since there was no formal or functional reason why the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche should “better not” be performed at national festivals,
Brahms’s retraction must display some ambivalence toward, or uneasiness
about, the festivals themselves. In contrast to his frequent attendance at—
and even participation in—music festivals all over Germany, there is no evi-
dence that he similarly attended national festivals. In lieu of such informa-
tion, Brahms’s reaction to the dedication of the Niederwald Denkmal in
1883 in the letter to Laura von Beckerath nine years later may give some in-
dication of his mixed emotions about celebrations of this type. Brahms was
inspired (says Kalbeck) by the sight of the “Germania” monument and was
probably equally moved by the spectacle that accompanied its unveiling.
From the Beckeraths’ vineyard overlooking the Rhine, Brahms watched as
“the Kaiser and his brilliant procession, the heroes of 1870, the princes and
representatives of the German Volk processed toward the Niederwald to at-
tend the dedication of the national monument.”34 Admiring though Brahms
may have been, he only looked on from a distance. There may well have
been compelling reasons for him not to actually attend the ceremonies him-
self, but the image that Kalbeck presents to us suggests a degree of separa-
tion, of distance, and perhaps of an underlying ambivalence or uneasiness
about the whole affair. Any latent negative feelings Brahms had harbored
toward national festivals in 1883 would have become that much more pro-
nounced five to six years later, when the Fest- und Gedenksprüche were
written in response to the crisis of the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr.
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 149

Another indication that Brahms did not want to associate himself too
strongly with patriotic festivals is the meager amount of music he wrote for
men’s chorus. The Männerchor played an important role in nineteenth-cen-
tury public festivals, and the development of these partly musical, partly so-
cial organizations was closely tied to the nationalist movement in Germany.
Outside of the oratorio-style works Rinaldo, op. 50, and the Alto Rhap-
sody, op. 53, in which men’s choruses (and orchestra) accompany a soloist,
Brahms produced only the modest five unaccompanied lieder for four-voice
men’s chorus, op. 41.35 Whereas most of the other small-scale choral works
he wrote in the late 1850s through the 1860s were intended for the various
choirs Brahms directed in these years—a women’s chorus in his native Ham-
burg and mixed choruses in the nearby court of Detmold and later in Vi-
enna—there is little evidence concerning when or for what possible occasion
these Männerchor lieder may have been composed. Most likely, Brahms was
merely tapping into the rich tradition of patriotic men’s choral music that
dated back to the Liedertafeln from the first decades of the century, in which
men could gather to sing, as an extension of bourgeois domesticity, as well
as to instill a sense of community and, by extension, patriotism in German
lands. Along with other social institutions such as gymnastics clubs and
sharpshooting societies, the men’s choirs became closely associated with the
German nationalist drive in the first half of the nineteenth century.36
German Männerchor music in the early nineteenth century tended toward
military and/or patriotic texts with musical devices (march rhythms, for ex-
ample) to match. Those qualities are very much what distinguish Brahms’s
writing for men in op. 41 from his contemporaneous works for women’s or
mixed choirs. An exception must be made for the first number in op. 41, a
faux-Renaissance setting of the old folk song “Ich schwing mein Horn in
Jammertal.” With its block-chord texture and modal melodic style it sounds
more in the style of “Ach lieber Herre Jesu Christ” (discussed in Chapter 1)
and less like a member of this generally modern, militaristic set of men’s
choruses. Brahms arranged the same setting for his women’s chorus in Ham-
burg, and a still earlier version for men’s voices may have existed.37
The other four more modern-sounding choruses in op. 41 all set texts
from Carl Lemcke’s Lieder und Gedichte (1861), a book Brahms acquired
in 1862. Unlike the triple-meter dance rhythms that run through much of
his contemporaneous music for women’s chorus, such as the Twelve Lieder
and Romances, op. 44 (published one year earlier in 1866), songs 2–5 of
op. 41 are dominated by duple march rhythms, frequent unison writing,
and energetic melodies that either directly state or outline triads. These
characteristics are evident even in the less forceful middle songs of the set,
nos. 3 and 4. Both of these songs, for example, are designated with march
tempos (tempo di marcia moderato and im Marschtempo). Moreover, no. 3,
150 Brahms and the German Spirit

Tempo di Marcia moderato

Unison
Unison Chords
 1
      
Tenor       
          
1+2      
   rf
mf Was freut ein - en al - ten Sol - da - ten? Drei Sal - ven ü - ber sein
   
Bass     
 
       
    
   
1+2        


 

Chords
4
          
 

            
   
  

 f 
Grab. Die ge -ben die Ka - me - ra - den, die Mus - ke - ten wer - den ge - la - den,
    
      
   
          
        


   
 
(die Mus - )
6
b III iv V I

Example 5.3 Op. 41, no. “Geleit,” bars 1–7: alternations of unisons and block
chords.

“Geleit,” borrows heavily from clichés of the Männerchor style, like the uni-
son E-flats across all four voices on the pickup and initial downbeat that
gradually give way to harmony by the middle of the first bar and subsequent
alternations of unisons and block chords in the first seven bars (see ex. 5.3).
Yet one cannot easily dismiss this piece as a product typical of its genre, for
Brahms supplies many subtleties that go well beyond the normal textural
and harmonic simplicity one encounters in most of the mid-nineteenth-
century German repertoire for men’s choruses. Right away, for example,
Brahms departs from the home key of E-flat major, as subtle shifts of har-
mony around the pitch D-flat provide coloristic effects and an aura of mel-
ancholy befitting the text: an homage to fallen comrades. This is achieved
harmonically in bars 7–8, where the move from an A-flat minor harmony
(iv) at the end of bar 7 to the major tonic in bar 8—with only the briefest in-
tervention of the dominant harmony (a sixteenth note)—conveys an odd
modal mixture. As I discuss momentarily, such subtle handling of unison
phrase incipits plays heavily into the cultural-political meaning of the Fest-
und Gedenksprüche, op. 109.
Both op. 41, no. 3, and the ensuing no. 4, “Marschieren,” are texts (and
settings) that depict the soldier away from the battle. By contrast, the second
and fifth pieces in the set (“Freiwillige her!” and “Gebt Acht!”) are aggres-
sively chauvinistic and leave no doubt as to how far toward military enthu-
siasm Brahms’s youthful patriotism could lean. That is especially true of the
fifth and final song, where Lemcke’s four strophes depict a world where “en-
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 151

emies” (Feinde) encroach on every side and will use trickery to defeat the
“Vaterland.” The battle to which these texts summon the German “Volk”
and “Brüdern” is the pre-1848 liberal-democratic unity movement, as the
strongly accented “Schwarz, Rot, Gold” (the Trikolore of the liberal move-
ment) in bars 8–9 of op. 41, no. 2, makes clear. Their patriotism, therefore,
is directly tied to a Romantic conception of nationhood, and hence reso-
nated with Brahms’s youthful Romantic roots—not with the later festivals
of the Kaiserreich. Brahms composed no more works for men’s chorus after
op. 41, but that is not to say that he lost his chauvinism over the years: there
are many recorded comments by him surrounding the Franco-Prussian War
that bear witness to his continued pride in Prussia’s military successes.38
Moreover, Brahms continued to support the major military-political figures
in the Reich—Bismarck, Wilhelm I, Wilhelm II—avidly enough to cause a
serious rift in his close friendship with Joseph Widmann in 1888, after the
Swiss playwright penned a disparaging article about the new Kaiser’s first
speech to the army. When the time came to select texts for the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, Brahms apparently found his sympathies split between the
Reich and the Volk; mediation and reconciliation are the main impressions
that one gains from the music of op. 109.

Prayer and Reconciliation

Brahms turned to a prayer (Wisdom of Solomon 9) within his notebook of
biblical texts in reaction to a national crisis, and his inclination to pray even-
tually found its way into the Fest- und Gedenksprüche through other texts
that had been collected sometime earlier. In the previously cited letter to
Bülow, Brahms called these pieces “hymnartig,” a term that by the late nine-
teenth century had come to mean a large-scale work for chorus.39 The style
of op. 109 is not so grandiose that we would expect such a label, but the ele-
ment of prayer in these works might account for Brahms’s characterization.
Prayer is most strongly and directly evoked in op. 109 by the opening text of
no. 1: “Unsere Väter hofften auf dich . . . zu dir schrien sie.” At the same
time, the fear of disunity that prompted these compositions is most clearly
depicted in the music of this first piece as well. Right from the opening,
Brahms employs polychoral textures that depict separate groups in the most
vivid musical terms possible. Choir 2 begins the piece with a unison arpeg-
gio (F–C–A–C) that is immediately embellished by choir 1 in bars 2–4 with
highly figured four-voice counterpoint. Out of this opening gesture, a pat-
tern emerges in which starkly simple statements by choir 2 are juxtaposed
with and elaborated by a more sophisticated and learned tone in choir 1.
And while simplicity and sophistication would hardly account for all of the
potential divisions in German society, they nevertheless imply low and high
152 Brahms and the German Spirit

Soprano 2
Bars 1-2 Bars 4-5 Bars 8-9

  
          
   
Un - se - re Vä - ter Hoff - ten auf Dich und das sie hoff-ten

Soprano 1
f zu dir schrie - en,schrieen sie,
f
         
             
    
halfst du , halfst du ih - nen aus. zu dir schrie en sie,

Soprano 2

Bars 13-17

Example 5.4 Op. 109, no. 1: motivic relationships between bars 1–9 and 13–17.

art, a distinction that could be understood to represent the division between

the Volk and the educated middle-class bourgeoisie.
In this opening section of op. 109, no. 1 (bars 1–15), the two choirs pres-
ent the same idea (i.e., musical material) in their own very distinct manners,
suggesting that despite their outward differences, the two groups basically
share a common identity. Thus, there is an underlying unity, or at least a ba-
sis for reconciliation between them. The concept of a straightforward state-
ment followed by a more elaborate one also holds true for the overall struc-
ture of the opening piece. For just as choir 1 expands and embellishes the
immediately preceding statement of choir 2 in the opening bars, the second
and third sections of op. 109, no. 1 (bars 15–29 and 29–51, respectively),
vary and elaborate the material of the first fifteen bars. Bars 15–29 divide
into two halves: 15–21 and 21–29. Although a large degree of ornamenta-
tion and figuration obscures the resemblance, each half is derived from the
same kernel motives as bars 1–15 and highlights the significant harmonic
outlines of those bars. Each section (bars 1–15 and 15–29) can be traced
back to the succession of unison statements by choir 2 in bars 1–2, 4–5, and
8–9, followed by a return through D minor to F major (see ex. 5.4).
The final section of op. 109, no. 1 (bars 29–51), forms a clearer variation
of bars 1–15 and has been more widely recognized as such.40 Like the sec-
ond section, the third divides into two similar halves. Perhaps the most
striking feature here is the appearance of a “men’s chorus” in the first half,
bars 29–36. Whereas Brahms may very well have intended the male voices
to symbolize the “Kraft” that God grants to His Volk, the use of that timbre
for an entire half section also amounts to a textural variation on the opening
gesture of the piece, a unison arpeggio of the sort that is heard at the begin-
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 153

ning of many Männerchor pieces. By collecting the Männerchor textural ref-

erences of bars 1–15 into a continuous phrase in bars 29–36, and following
that phrase with an extended and contrapuntally more elaborate variation
in bars 37–47, Brahms expresses in consecutive terms a variation structure
that had been stated simultaneously in the opening section. In essence, bars
29–47 form a “structural variation” of bars 1–15—and so, for that matter,
do bars 15–29.
From a number of perspectives, the structure and choral textures in the
first of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche demonstrate the unity in the face of di-
versity that Brahms hoped would hold the Reich together. Two dissimilar
groups (i.e., choirs 1 and 2) are pitted against each other, sometimes in stark
relief, yet they display undeniable common roots and ultimately flow to-
gether at the ends of sections in prayerful plagal cadences.
In op. 109, no. 2, the element of prayer disappears while a direct refer-
ence to the “Reich” surfaces. In accordance with the unity and stability for
which the modern Kaiserreich stood (in the national-liberal view), this piece
displays the most balanced and stable form of the three, with a clearly con-
trasting middle section in the tonic minor between two nearly identical
outer sections in C major. Key words such as “starker” and “bewahret”
match the decisiveness of musical form in the piece. But underlying an
edifice of strength and stability are musical clues that all is not well in the
“Reich”; the instability expressed in the middle section is actually foreshad-
owed—and then echoed—in the C major portions of the piece, which there-
fore are not as self-assured as their opening bars might suggest.
The first twelve bars of no. 2 remain solidly in C major with martial-like
rhythms and short, clearly defined motives that project confidence, decisive-
ness, and uniformity. Unlike in most of the previous piece, the choirs here
present exactly the same material (except at the ends of phrases where ca-
dences must be articulated: bars 4–6 and 11–12), enhancing the image of
agreement and precision. Without any harmonic preparation, however, Brahms
suddenly introduces a prolonged passage in F major at the words “so bleibet
das Seine mit Frieden” in bars 12–25. While the martial rhythms persist
through bar 17, nearly every other parameter changes here. Bars 12–25 are
as clearly in F as the opening twelve bars were in C, but they are much less
solidly anchored on the tonic and dominant harmonies, especially the first
phrase of that passage (bars 12–21), which moves in descending thirds from
F to D minor, B-flat, and G minor before cadencing on D major (V of ii).
Moreover, the second half of the passage dwells on the relative minor (D) of
F, before C major is reestablished as the tonic when all eight voices articulate
the same phrase together for the first time in the piece at the words “mit
Frieden” in bar 25.
Like the relatively less stable harmony in this subdominant episode, the
154 Brahms and the German Spirit

disposition of the choirs here is also less cohesive than it was in bars 1–12.
Choirs 1 and 2 continue to share the same motives in bars 12–25, but vary
them as in the chain of thirds just described. That variety leads to clashes
like the overlapping hemiolas between the choirs in bars 15–17 (see ex. 5.5)
and a new level of harmonic dissonance, best demonstrated by the series of
major-second suspensions between the two soprano parts in bars 16–21.
Whereas the rhythmic character of this material may not be overtly different
from the opening period of the piece, devices such as overlapping hemiolas
and suspensions suggest a style that is decidedly more ecclesiastic than mili-
tary. In this sense, the F major episode resonates with the pervasive
“hymnartig” plagal cadences throughout op. 109, and the whole first part
of no. 2 can be heard as a large articulation of the harmonic progression I–V
(F–C) in bars 1–12, and IV–I (Bã–F) in bars 12–25, which is realized locally
in the three-bar “codetta” to the section at bars 26–28. The reversion to a
prayerful and religious musical style in bars 12–25 of no. 2 corresponds di-
rectly with the sudden return there to F major, the tonality of no. 1. Like-
wise, the end of the textual phrase in bars 25–28, “mit Frieden,” recalls the
closing text of the previous piece, “der Herr wird sein Volk segnen mit
Frieden,” replete with a plagal cadence. Amidst the martial confidence in
the outer sections of no. 2, therefore, Brahms offers a subtle reminder that
the unity and cohesion of the Reich cannot be taken for granted: one must
pray for it.
The point of those prayers is the feared disunity of the Reich, which is
portrayed both textually and musically in the middle portion of no. 2 (bars
31–57). Two of the most powerful examples of tone painting in Brahms’s
entire choral oeuvre occur here: the depiction of the “wasteland” that a di-
vided house becomes, through the hollow and dissonant tones of bars 36–
41; and the implication of “one house falling upon another,” through a
rushing sequence of cascading keys all the way from C minor in bar 46 to D-
flat major in bar 48. While these devices serve an immediate text-painting
function, the falling tonalities in bars 46–48 grow out of the earlier F major
episode in bars 12–25 (see ex. 5.6A–C). First, one must recognize that al-
though the falling keys in bars 46–49 progress tonally by fourths (G–c–f–
Bã–Eã–Aã–Dã), the melodic motion of that progression is produced by a
chain of descending thirds, beginning on the second sopranos’ G in bar 46
(ex. 5.6C). Looking back to the head-motive of the middle section, we see
that this chain of thirds develops out of a descending arpeggio G–Eã–C
that is introduced by tenor 1 in bar 31 (ex. 5.6B). And in turn, we can trace
this arpeggio to the end of the earlier chain of thirds in bars 12–15 (i.e., F–
D–Bã–G: ex. 5.6A), of which it is an extension. It will be recalled that the
thirds in bars 12–15 marked the first loosening of harmonic precision and
control in the opening section of the piece. If, as I have argued, the F major
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 155

F/G

    
Choir 1
     
13

     
sop.
so blei - bet das Sei - ne mit

            
sop.  
Choir 2
   
so blei - bet das Sei - ne so blei - bet das Sei - ne
 
   
so blei - bet das Sei

- ne
   
so blei - bet

das

Alto     
    
Choir 1  
           
Ten.
Bass       

   
Alto           
       
   
Choir 2
Ten.

        
Bass blei   
so - bet das Sei - ne so blei - bet das Sei - ne

F/G G/A E/D

  
       
17

Frie - den das Sei - - ne mit Frie - - den,

          

mit Frie - - - - - - - - den,

      
Sei - ne - mit Frie - den, das Sei - ne mit Frie - - - den,
         
Sei  
- - - - ne
 
mit Frie - - - - - - den,
        

   
ne mit Frie - - den,
Sei - - - - -
       
Sei - - ne mit Frie - - den,
    

    
so blei - bet das Sei - ne mit
  Frie - - - - - - -den,

     


        


 
 
Sei - ne mit Frie - - den,

Example 5.5 Op. 109, no. 2: overlapping hemiolas between the choirs in bars 15–17. (So-
pranos separated off from respective choirs for illustrative purposes.)
156 Brahms and the German Spirit

A

so

blei - bet
 
das Sei - ne mit
       
13
Sop.     

   

Alto
    
Choir 1
Ten.    
        
Bass 
    
blei - bet das Sei - ne so blei - bet das

  
 
so blei - bet das Sei - ne so blei - bet das Sei - ne
Sop.
     
     
Alto
  
  
Ten.  
           
Choir 2
    
Bass 
  
so blei - bet das Sei - ne so blei - bet das Sei - ne

    
I vi IV ii

B
13 so es mit ihm selbst, so esmit ihm selbst un-eins wird,
 f     
   
Sop.            
Alto              
  
   
Choir 1   un eins wird
      
f            
Ten.            
Bass    
Ein jeg lich Reich so es mit ihm selbst un - eins wird
Ein jeg - lich Reich so es mit ihmselbst uneins wird,
f
    
Sop.   

               
Alto     
so es mit
 ihm selbst un eins wird
Choir 2  
  f           
Ten.        
Bass      
f

Example 5.6 Op. 109, no. 2: “falling” tonalities in op. 109, no. 2: (A) bars 12–15;
(B) bars 31–35; (C) bars 46–49.

episode in bars 12–25 symbolizes the general prayerfulness of the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche amidst the martial depiction of the Reich in no. 2, then the
continuation of that third chain by the head-motive of the middle section
(G–Eã–C) links the prayer with the dissolution of the Reich. Ultimately,
those thirds continue in the falling keys that propel the musical depiction of
the Reich’s collapse.
Both Michael Beuerle and Virginia Hancock have referred to various
parts of the middle portion of op. 109, no. 2, as “chaotic.” That effect is
mostly achieved by dividing each choir against itself. Like the motivic fore-
shadowing of falling thirds in bars 12–15, the rhythmic disagreement be-
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 157

 fäl-let ü - ber das an - de - re

C

             

46
Sop.     
Alt
  
fäl-let ü - ber das an - de - re
fäl-let ü - ber das an - de - re ü - ber das
Ten.                     
Bass        
fä - let ü - ber das an - de - re, ü - ber - das
      
fäl - let ü - ber das an
Sop.        
Alt.               
fäl-let ü - ber das an ü - ber das an - de -

     
fäl - let ü - ber das an - de - re
  fäl - let ü - ber das
Ten.                
Bass    
fäl- let ü - ber das an - de - re ü - ber das


    
      
  

Example 5.6 (continued)

tween choirs 1 and 2 that ensues in the cross-hemiolas of bars 15–17 pre-
pares the listener for a more intense rhythmic fragmentation that occurs
within each choir throughout the middle section of no. 2. A climax of
disjunction arrives at the eight-bar retransition into the reprise of the open-
ing section (bars 51–58). Here a five-beat asymmetrical motive is tossed
among the voices of both choirs on nearly every conceivable beat, as the
middle section’s 4/4 meter dissolves back into the 3/4 meter of the opening
material. In bar 54, for instance, a textual phrase begins on every beat
(“wenn ein starker”), while an accented syllable falls on every beat: “Stark-
er” and “Ge-wapp-neter” on beat 1 (soprano 1, alto 1, alto 2, tenor 2);
“Stark-er” on beat 2 (bass 2); “Stark-er” and “Ge-wapp-neter” on beat 3
(bass 1, tenor 2); and “Stark-er” on beat 4 (tenor 1). When the uniform and
precise phrasing of the opening section returns beginning in bar 57, it is as if
the “starker Gewappneter” has forcefully restored order and precision to
the chaotic Reich.
Whereas op. 109, no. 2, focuses on division, the music of no. 3 depicts
union. Unlike the separate groups portrayed at the beginning of no. 1, from
which an underlying unity was merely suggested, various combinations of
voices at the beginning of no. 3 vividly portray the coming together of sepa-
rate strands into one integrated whole. Immediately, the men’s voices of
both choirs begin together in bar 1, after which the addition of all four
women’s voices in bar 2 expands the timbre and masks a transition into a
158 Brahms and the German Spirit

8 + 4

(4 + 4)

Choir 1 1 − 4 9 − 11

5 8 10 − 12
Choir 2
(F major): I IV I IV V/ii − IV/IV − V − I

“Wo is ein so “Wo is ein so “ein so herrlich volk”

herrlich volk” herrlich volk”

Figure 5.1 Phrase structure and divisions of four-voice units in op. 109, no. 3, bars
1–12.

single S A T B unit, choir 1, in bars 2–5. Brahms similarly smooths over the
emergence of choir 2 as a second four-voice unit in bars 5–8 by extending
tenor 1 and bass 1 past the first choir’s cadence in bar 5. The wavelike repe-
tition of the ascending arpeggio, A–C–F, in these opening bars adds to the
fluid effect that draws the listener’s attention away from the division be-
tween the separate choirs (outlined in fig. 5.1), which is actually quite dis-
tinct and articulates an 8 + 4 bar period.
Throughout the opening section of the piece (bars 1–42), Brahms employs
a variety of voice combinations and timbral mixtures that join one or more
voices from one choir with voices from the other, thereby helping to blur the
distinction of separate groups. The interrelation of the two choirs here
serves as a musical metaphor for integration and unification. From bar 13
on, Brahms doubles at least one voice part at all times to bring out a specific
line against a blended choral texture: sopranos in bars 13–15 (against altos
1 and 2 and tenor 1) and basses in bars 17–22. When the basses begin mov-
ing in octaves at bar 24, the remaining six voices act as a “responsorial
choir” to the basses’ forte upward leaps (bars 24–29). But thereafter (bars
29–33), choirs 1 and 2 divide into a passage of conflicting hemiolas, against
which only the basses provide an anchor in the prevailing 3/4 meter.41 At the
same time that the music is threatening to become rhythmically unglued, the
harmony drifts away from the tonic F major through a series of fourths: C–
F–Bã–(g)–Eã–(c)–Aã–(Eã–Bã)–Dã, not unlike the “falling houses” motif of
op. 109, no. 2.
As in that earlier instance of “chaos” which had to be forced back into
order by the “starker Gewappneter“ in no. 2, a sudden C-major harmony
in bar 33 of no. 3 wrests the spiraling harmonies of the preceding passage
back toward F major. Brahms accents the effect of that dominant chord
through a syncopation (bar 33, beat 3) that introduces a new hemiola se-
quence. Choirs 1 and 2 enter separately with the words “als der Herr unser
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 159

Gott” in bars 33–36, but their rhythms begin to merge here, and they join
completely in a new set of hemiolas beginning at bar 37. Now, as the upper
voices of the two choirs articulate their text in perfect alignment, a com-
pletely diatonicized variation of the earlier hemiola material (bars 29–33)
proceeds to an extended four-bar authentic cadence in F major. What has
been won by the wrenching return to F major, therefore, is a completion of
the uniformity and agreement between the two choirs that had been only
partially realized throughout the first thirty-six bars of the piece. If we recall
how suddenly Brahms introduced the F major interjection in bars 13–25
(and 68–81) of no. 2 to conjure up the prayerfulness of no. 1, it is well
worth noticing the text that is set in no. 3 at bars 24–42: “als der Herr unser
Gott so oft wir ihn anrufen.” By making an equally sudden return to F ma-
jor in this piece around the word “anrufen“ (pray), Brahms draws the lis-
tener’s attention to the congruity of choral texture in bars 37–42 and once
again emphasizes prayer within the Fest- und Gedenksprüche. Here, prayer
can be specifically understood as an agent of unification.
Other musical symbols of unification appear within bars 1–12. Earlier
I referred to the repetitions of the ascending F major arpeggio (A–C–F),
which is passed from voice to voice in wavelike fashion and which stands
out as a head-motive for this movement. That figure is generally set against
the descending melodic figure F–E–D as part of a motivic pair: alto 1–bass 2
(bar 1); soprano 1–alto 2 (bar 2); tenor 2–bass 1 (bar 5); and so on. Locally,
this motivic pair binds the two choirs together, in that every occurrence in-
volves one voice from each choir. Both motives form a unifying function
within the larger context of the three-piece opus as well, in that each is
closely related to motives from nos. 1 and 2. The ascending F major arpeg-
gio can be easily traced to the beginning of no. 1, where the opposite figure
(F–C–A) is intoned in unison by choir 2. There, at the beginning of the entire
opus, the two choirs shared that motive in a way that offered the hope of
agreement and unity. Here, in the last piece, that hope is realized at one level
by the integration of two choirs through the inverted (rising) form of the
same motive.
The other melodic motive at the beginning of no. 3, F–E–D, presents itself
less obviously throughout the Fest- und Gedenksprüche but proves to be a
consistent and significant motive in all three pieces. Examples 5.7A–C trace
this motive’s transformation throughout op. 109. The motive first appears
in no. 1 at the “elision” of bars 11–15, where the opening arpeggio gradu-
ally reemerges from the descending unison F–E–D–(A)–C of choir 2 in bar
11 (ex. 5.7A). At the end of no. 1 the final variation of the opening section
concludes in bars 46–48 with an extended treatment of the motive from bar
11 to the words “segnen mit,” now truncated to just three pitches, F–E–D
(ex. 5.7B). In no. 2 the F–E–D motive is used more subtly, but its various
160 Brahms and the German Spirit

A
Choir 1

          
halfst du ih - nen

   
  
halfst du ih - nen,

           
      
halfst du ih - nen, halfst du ih - nen

     
halfst du ih - nen, halfst du ih

Choir 2
Choir 2

B
seg - nen mit Frie - den
 
     
46

    
seg - - nen mit Fried -

   
Volk
        
      
Volk seg - nen, seg - - nen mit

C
das sei - - ne, mit Frie - den.

                      

20 Frie - den,
 
Frie - den, das sei - ne, mit Frie - - den.

                

den, das sei - ne, mitden. Frie - -


      
   

    
Frie - den, das sei - ne, mit Frie - den.

                    

wer - den, das sei - ne mit Frie - den, mit Fried - - den.
      
Frie - den, das sei - ne mit Frie - den, mit Fried - -
 den.

     
     
    
den,das
        
sei
      -  den.
- ne, das Sei - ne mit Fried -


             
Frie - den, das sei - ne, das Sei - ne mit Fried - - den.

Example 5.7 Op. 109: transformation of F–E–D motive: (A) no. 1, bars 11–15; (B)
no. 1, bars 46–48; (C) no. 2 bars 21–25.
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 161

manifestations occur at particularly important junctures. Most prominent is

the twofold F–E–D statement to the words “das Seine” by soprano 2 in bars
21–23 and by soprano 1 in bars 23–25 (ex. 5.7C). The F that begins the first
statement on beat three of bar 21 causes a cross-relation with the first alto’s
F-sharp on the previous beat.42 The cross-relation defines beat three as the
beginning of a new phrase and thereby focuses on the F–E–D motive in so-
prano 2, which is immediately repeated by soprano 1. Brahms also distin-
guished the end of this twofold motivic statement by bringing all eight
voices together for the first time in the piece on the word “mit” at bar 25,
beat three. Along with the plagal cadence and ecclesiastical tone of bars 13–
28, the F–E–D motive at the words “das Seine mit Frieden” forms a link to
the words “segnen mit Frieden” at the end of no. 1.
When Brahms combines the ascending F major arpeggio with the de-
scending melodic motive (F–E–D) in no. 3, he saturates the harmony of the
opening bars with an effect that Virginia Hancock has described as “dia-
tonic dissonance.”43 In fact, much of the “dissonance” in the present case is
caused by the sustained F’s against which the F–E–D motive descends to
produce frequent passing minor seconds, as in bass 1 and 2 (bars 1 and 5)
and altos 1 and 2 (bars 2 and 6). Even when the descending melodic motive
reaches the higher register of soprano 1 and is broadened slightly in bars 3–
4, Brahms sets the rising A–C–F arpeggio below it in tenor 1 so that the final
F of the arpeggio creates a minor ninth with the passing E of the soprano
(bar 3, beat three). Hancock rightly ascribes to these diatonic dissonances a
“characteristic warmth” that one senses throughout the first twenty-four
bars, especially in 12–24, where every bar contains a suspension or an unre-
solved dissonance on the downbeat. It is this characteristic warmth that,
along with the ascending arpeggio, supplies the opening section of no. 3
with an affirmative tone and renders the prayers hopeful rather than urgent,
a quality that complements the musical unity of the two choirs in these same
bars.
Having overcome the urgency of nos. 1 and 2, Brahms steps back in the
middle of op. 109, no. 3, to offer a basis for the preceding prayers, a rea-
son to believe in their effectiveness. This middle portion, therefore, forms
a core of meaning not just to no. 3 but to the whole of the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, forming a contemplative center to the work. Only in this
section are the Volk themselves addressed, “Hüte dich nur,” indicating a
point of self-reflection within the Fest- und Gedenksprüche. Brahms appro-
priately singles out this material within all of op. 109 through its fine dy-
namic gradations. Elsewhere in the three pieces, he almost exclusively em-
ploys forte dynamic markings, which are intended more to demarcate where
entries of individual voice parts should stand out than to indicate actual
changes in volume.44 Bars 43–82, however, are replete with pianos, as well
162 Brahms and the German Spirit

as crescendo, diminuendo, espressivo, and dolce markings, rendering this

music more contemplative and less festive than that which surrounds it.
Another defining feature of this section is its archaic style. Although there
are many instances of older techniques throughout the Fest- und
Gedenksprüche, it is only in the middle portion of no. 3 that Brahms main-
tains a discernibly baroque style, which is signaled right away by the double
canon in choir 1 during bars 43–52 at the words “Hüte dich nur und
bewahre deine Seele wohl.” Thereafter, the interplay of the two choirs is
closely modeled on baroque polychoral techniques such as the overlapping
entries of bars 57–66, and the consecutive statements of the same material
in bars 66–77. The allusion to the music of composers such as Schütz and
Giovanni Gabrieli is basic and generalized but unmistakable. Brahms uses a
canon and historical style here to depict musically two aspects of the text
from Deuteronomy 4:9—the overt mention of the “history” that we have
seen with our own eyes, and the submerged allusion to “laws” in this pas-
sage, which is spoken by Moses to the Israelites as he reminds them of their
covenant with God in the Ten Commandments. Within the Pentateuch of
the Bible, the opening chapters of Deuteronomy act as a summation and
culmination; Moses has led his people to the verge of the Promised Land
and is reviewing with them their history and their obligation to the Lord.
But, as one writer states, “Here the legal tradition of the book of Exodus . . .
is not just repeated; it is interpreted in contemporary terms.”45 Brahms’s set-
ting of this passage also serves a “contemporizing” function. The musical
reversion to historical style and technique (canon) at this point in the Fest-
und Gedenksprüche corresponds to the rhetorical stance of the text; these
historical foundations of German music (i.e., canon and polychorality) are
invoked as symbols of the past within a larger musical context (the entire
opus) that is contemporary. After the prayers of nos. 1 and 3, and the depic-
tion of their subject (the troubled Reich) in no. 2, the middle section of no. 3
supplies a completely new perspective within op. 109. It is here that Brahms,
by treating Moses’ text with a musically historical perspective, preaches
to his people much in the same way that Moses did to the Israelites.
Significantly, Brahms turns to the words of Moses, the lawgiver, to preach
the necessity of maintaining historical tradition and legalism as the means
by which the community’s prayers can be answered. In this way he elevates
the very characteristics of the Old Testament, and of the modern state, that
were opposed by Lagarde and the reactionary champions of the Volk, and
offers these as a basis from which to maintain hopefulness in a time of na-
tional crisis.
By returning to the opening material of no. 3 in bar 82, as the “Kindern
und Kindeskindern” are evoked, Brahms provides a musical symmetry
within this one piece while a textual symmetry across the entire cycle is be-
 National Prayers in the Fest- und Gedenkspruche 163

No. 1: 1–15 15–29 29–51 No. 3: 1–12 12–24 82–95

Unsere ZU DIR der HERR Wo ist so ein ZU DEM Und sollst deinen
VÄTER schrieen wird seinem HERRLICH [Volk] KINDERN und
hofften auf dich sie VOLK VOLK KINDESKINDERN

Figure 5.2 Textual symmetry across op. 109, nos. 1–3.

ing broken. Multiple generations of children signify the future and look
ahead here at the end of the cycle, whereas our fathers signified the past and
looked back at the outset of no. 1. All of this occurs within an other-
wise (generally) symmetrical text pattern, as diagrammed in fig. 5.2. At the
last instant, Brahms breaks the symmetrical pattern by opposing “Unsere
Väter,” a symbol of the past, with “deine Kindern und Kindeskindern,” a
symbol of the future. Perhaps it is this change in temporal context that leads
Brahms to rearrange the choral texture when, at the end of no. 3, he brings
back the opening material, which is now set for five voices: choir 1 with bass
2 in bars 82–85; choir 2 with bass 1 in bars 85–88.
The closing “Amen” in bars 96–105 extends the new five-voice texture by
incorporating soprano 2 into a canon with all of choir 1, while the lower
voices of choir 2 add harmonic support. The canonic entries beginning with
bass 1 in bar 96 also provide an ultimate realization of the unity amidst di-
versity that was expressed at the beginning of the opus. As ex. 5.8 illus-
trates, the seven entries arpeggiate every harmony that belongs to the key of
F major (all in first inversion) above a sustained F pedal in bass 2, thus artic-
ulating each individual entity within the tonic key (diversity), while the fun-
damental pitch of that key is constantly sounding (unity).
When the spirit of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche is considered in detail,
one finds these to be not mere pieces of pomp and nationalistic affirmation
but musical works that reflect Brahms’s conflicted attitude toward his own
patriotism. Whereas the suggested unity of no. 1 finds its realization at
many points in no. 3, the cracks in the Reich depicted in no. 2 cannot be
overlooked and ultimately are not overcome. Brahms seems to have main-
tained hope in the future, so long as the German Volk were willing to re-
member their past and follow their own “covenant,” which had been real-
ized in the founding of the modern Kaiserreich. His valuing of the past for
the German people as a whole is not unlike his own personal need to be con-
nected to his artistic past. The Bible provided Brahms in op. 109 with an apt
historical and cultural symbol with which to represent tradition and law in
164 Brahms and the German Spirit

Choir 1 
 -  men,   
A -
     
            

  
A - men, A - men, A - men, A - men
A - men.
    
               
A - - men, A - men,
 
              
   
  
A - men, A - men, A - - men, A - men, A men,

 
            
                  
   
 A - - men, A - men,

tun. A - men, A - men,

                
tun. A - men, A - men, A - men, A - - men.
    
          
Choir 2 A - - - men, A - - men,


6 6 6 6 6 6 6
I IV viio iii vi ii V

Example 5.8 Op. 109, no. 3: seven arpeggiations of harmonies in key of F major.

a way that contemporary patriotic texts could not. Moreover, the division
between Völkisch and Staatlich patriotism at the end of the century had
grown out of an earlier religiously inspired nationalism that equated the
German people with the very Volk referred to in the biblical texts of the
Fest- und Gedenksprüche. Brahms was not to compose another work on
biblical texts before the Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121 of 1896. Those works,
whose texts were most likely copied into the pocket notebook of biblical
passages shortly before op. 109 was composed, similarly reacted to religious
attitudes that grew out of conservative ideological trends in the later nine-
teenth century.46 The Fest- und Gedenksprüche, however, were his last overt
statement on the political ramifications of those trends.
 C H A
6 P T E R

Beyond the End

Reminiscences
Brahms vacillated over the title of op. 109 much as he had with that of his
Deutsches Requiem. He alternately floated the adjectives “deutsch” and
“national” as the first word of the title, as would be fitting for works appro-
priate to the major national holidays of the Kaiserreich.1 Siegfried Kross
supposes (rightly I think) that Brahms decided against such strong adjec-
tives so as not to be politically misunderstood. Kross also finds repugnant
the symbolic use to which the National Socialists later subjected op. 109.
Specifically, he cites a performance of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche by the
Berlin Cathedral choir on 21 March 1933 in the Potsdam Garrison Church
before former president Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Kross
could not overlook the potentially ominous impact of the closing text of
no. 3, “Take care and watch yourselves carefully, so as neither to forget the
history your eyes have seen nor to let it slip from your heart all the days of
your life.” He labels these words, as sung in that context, a “terrifying
prophecy.”2
Kross, born in 1930, reacts as any music lover might (German or not) in
the aftermath of World War II. The quotation is drawn from the published
version of his thorough and unsurpassed study of Brahms’s choral music,
which formed his doctoral thesis at the University of Bonn in 1957. As he
states in the introduction to that book, Kross felt that his work was part of a
new wave of wissentschaftliche engagements with Brahms’s music after a
half century of Brahms biographies that were “so completely random, so
un-unified, some of which are so foundationless, that one is never really on
firm ground, not even in the purely biographical facts.”3 In other words,
Kross believed that he and his contemporaries would have to build a body
of Brahms scholarship systematically from the ground up. Those circum-
166 Brahms and the German Spirit

stances were not based merely on a failure of scholarship, however. Al-

though here he does not mention the politics of the previous decade, in
which he came of age and which engendered his response to the March 1933
performance of op. 109, Kross’s later English-language essay on Brahms’s cho-
ral music for the American Choral Review begins with a damning (and tell-
ing) critique of choral singing in Germany in the first half of the twentieth
century. Reading these lines, one finds it difficult to imagine that the sense of
tragedy he felt over the performance of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche for
Adolf Hitler was not deeply affected by the entire reception of Brahms and
his music in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power:
A few years before the outbreak of the First World War, new ideals of choral
music and choral sound began to take hold in circles of the German Youth
Movement. With them a particular attitude towards practices of communal
singing arose which found a typical formulation in the silly slogan-like postu-
late to “de-Brahms” German music (i.e., to cleanse it of Brahmsian influences).
With a certain feeling of resignation, one might today raise the question: Which
one of the blunders was worse, the blunder to identify—of all forms—the styl-
ized and highly refined madrigal with the ideal of communal singing (mistaking
the term musica reservata for “reserved” or non-subjective music), or the blun-
der to identify Brahms—of all composers—with the type of purely subjective
artist?4

One gleans from this statement (albeit written twenty-six years later) that
Kross despaired in 1957 not at his predecessors’ failure to solidify an under-
standing of Brahms’s music, but rather at the concerted effort to distort and
misrepresent Brahms by a choral movement that was engulfed in misguided
nationalism.
Of course, it was during the years 1933–1945, while the National Social-
ists were in power, that the reception of Brahms and virtually all of Ger-
many’s cultural past came under the heaviest barrage of propaganda-driven
historical revisionism. As early as the turn of the century, however, German
writers had already begun to shape Brahms’s legacy, painting him more and
more as an icon of moderation and stability against the rising aura of mod-
ernism. By the time the Nazis arrived on the scene, a work such as the Fest-
und Gendenksprüche was a perfect choice to celebrate the transfer of power
in the German state. Thus Karl Laux, writing in 1935, reports on the same
event with far different overtones:
And in the third chorus he expressed the ever-present warning, “That you do
not forget the history your eyes have seen nor let it slip from your heart all the
days of your life.” How weightily the two choirs implore each other; the old
technique of the double choir, taken over from the Venetian masters, takes on a
particular sense of depth here. And when Brahms allows the choir to celebrate
“froh bewegt” at the beginning of this third chorus—“For what other great na-
 Beyond the End 167

tion has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to Him?”—
this torrent of jubilation storms into our proud German present. And, as
Ehrmann rightly says, “perhaps a more meaningful use of the work than the
premiere performance itself” when, on 21 March 1933, at the great state cere-
mony of the German rise to power in the Potsdam Garrison Church, in the
presence of the Führer and Reichspresident Hindenburg, the Berlin Cathedral
chorus sang this third of the Fest- und Gedenksprüche at the conclusion of the
ceremony, this time not only a commemorative but rather a true “Festsprüch.”5

One expects such a response from within the National Socialist period.
But, as I will show later in this chapter, the seeds for the nationalistic image
of “Brahms the German” were sown long before 1933, particularly in some
of the best-known books and essays on Brahms from the first third of the
twentieth century.
Kross’s comments point to the diminished role that Brahms’s a cappella
choral music came to play in his posthumous reception, not only in compar-
ison with the larger choral-orchestral works but also against the composi-
tions of the 1890s, whose generally somber and nostalgic tone left a lasting
impression of the composer and the meaning of his music for a new century.
After composing the polychoral works of opp. 109 and 110, Brahms com-
posed nothing further in this medium. In fact, shortly after he completed
opp. 109 and 110, he dropped hints that he might cease composing alto-
gether. In a letter of 12 October 1990 Brahms remarked to his publisher
Fritz Simrock that upon leaving the resort town of Ischl ten days earlier he
had “thrown much ripped-up manuscript paper into the Thun [river].”6
About a year later, having produced nothing less than the first two of his
great chamber works with clarinet for Richard Mühlfeld (the A Minor Trio,
op. 114, and the B Minor Quintet, op. 115), Brahms reportedly told his
friend Eusebius Mandyczewski: “In the last few years I began various
things, symphonies and other works, but nothing came out quite right; it
made me think I might already be too old, and decided energetically to write
nothing more. I thought to myself that [perhaps] I had been industrious
enough all my life, had achieved enough, could have a carefree old age and
could now enjoy it in peace. And that made me so happy, so satisfied, so
pleased, that it [the writing] started up once again.”7 Brahms would go on to
compose two clarinet sonatas (op. 120) for Mühlfeld as well in 1894. Aside
from these pieces, however, nearly all of the music Brahms produced during
the last seven years of his life was retrospective in some way.
The largest portion of Brahms’s output during these last years consisted of
twenty piano miniatures published in 1892–93 as opp. 116–119. Although
several of these pieces (variously titled Intermezzo, Capriccio, Rhapsodie,
etc.) are thought to stem from decades earlier, as a group they clearly display
a late style for Brahms.8 (For the sake of simplicity I refer to them all as “In-
168 Brahms and the German Spirit

termezzi,” the term Brahms assigned to fourteen of these twenty works.)

The rich and complex harmonic language of such well-known items as the
Intermezzi op. 118, no. 2, in A major and op. 119, no. 1, in B minor illus-
trate Brahms’s most highly developed, indeed, his most modern style, not
only in technical-analytical terms but also in their world-weary, introspec-
tive character. Romantic Sehnsucht from Brahms’s youth had developed by
this point into mature melancholy: these are not the affected musings of the
“Junge Kreisler” (the alter ego Brahms created in his youth to concretize his
identification with E. T. A. Hoffmann’s imaginary Kapellmeister), but rather
the reflections of an older man. Such sentiment runs throughout the late In-
termezzi. Often it is symbolized by musical displacements: harmonies, mo-
tives, or gestures which fall outside their proper musical context, thereby
suggesting something that is remembered but that can no longer fit comfort-
ably into the context in which it originally occurred.
No piece among the Intermezzi better epitomizes this effect than the E-flat
Major Intermezzo, op. 117, no. 1. Brahms provided an epigraph to this
piece, the opening lines of a Scottish folk song from Herder’s Stimme der
Völker in Liedern:

Schlaf sanft, mein Kind, schlaf sanft und schön!

Mich dauert’s sehr, dich weinen sehn.
[Sleep softly, my child, sleep softly and fine!
It grieves me greatly to see you cry.]

Herder titled that poem “Wiegenlieder einer unglücklichen Mutter” (Lul-

laby of an Unhappy Mother), itself a translation of “Lady Anne Bothwell’s
Lament” from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Brahms
copied it and one other “Scottish” poem from Herder’s volume, “O weh! o
Weh! hinab ins Thal” (Alas! Alas! Down to the Valley), into one of the note-
books of poetic texts discussed in Chapter 2.9 One can hear the words of
Herder’s “Wiegenlieder” behind the inner right-hand melody of the first
four bars in Brahms’s Intermezzo (ex. 6.1). The folklike simplicity of the ac-
companiment here is a setup: unlike in the urban waltz tune that underlies
the op. 49, no. 4, “Wiegenlied,” Brahms affects a pastoral tone in this Inter-
mezzo in order to objectify the folk character of the piece. A rustic folk style
is depicted by several means here. First, a strumming effect is suggested by
the repeated E’s in the right hand against the moving melody, which evokes
the sound of an open string on a guitar ringing through a melodic phrase.
And against this textural effect, the overly plain rhythmic and harmonic
profile of the foursquare initial melody contributes to a picture of pastoral
simplicity. As he subtly develops that folklike melody in the first section of
the piece (bars 1–16), Brahms gradually brings his own (modern) musical
language to the fore through the secondary dominants (and other, richer
 Beyond the End 169

Schlaf sanft mein Kind, schlaf sanft und schön!

Mich dauert's sehr, dich weinen sehn.
Andante moderato F EG 
(Schottisch. Aus Herders Volksliedern)
 
         
 
   
         
              
          
          
dolce
p
    
    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                
 
      


6         
       
    
  
   
              
               
 


     
         

     
              
 
 
 
 



           
       


   
11      poco a poco rit.
   

  

     
                 
         
   
          

   dim.






        
 








 
 
 
 
 

   
      
 dolce

Hemiolas
16
                
    
            
        

  

 rit. molto
p

         
    
             
  
  

   

        

Bb C A A Bb G
20 Più Adagio  
 
 
   
  
        
       
   

 
 
   
 
  
 . .  . .   
. .  
pp sempre ma molto espressivo
     
            

      
  
Bb G A

Example 6.1 Brahms, Intermezzo in E-flat Major, op. 117 no. 1, bars 1–23.

harmonies) engendered by A natural in bars 7–8, 11–12, and so on; the

hemiola cross rhythms of bars 13–15; and the recasting of the theme in the
minor mode in the codetta of bars 16–20. With each passing device that
Brahms applies to the pastoral opening, the folk character of the initial idea
is objectified and thus placed at a distance, until the entire middle section of
the song, set in the parallel (E-flat) minor, forms a brooding reflection on the
pre–cadential turn motive from the initial melody. Brahms restates the F–E–
G figure from the middle voice at bar 2 as the hemiola Bã–G–A in octaves in
the bass at bar 20, immediately before the figure is inverted as Bã–C–A and
170 Brahms and the German Spirit

as A–Bã–G in the topmost voice at bars 21–22.10 The folk quality of the
opening is rendered not so much an affectation as a memory of something
cherished from afar, something over which the ego can reminisce and con-
template—even brood—but which has become distant.
Brahms reportedly referred to the three Intermezzi of op. 117 as “lullabies
of my sorrows” (“Wiegenlieder meiner Schmerzen”), a designation that for
most commentators has resonated with the generally gloomy nature of the
remaining two pieces in op. 117, both of which are cast in minor keys (B-flat
and C-sharp).11 As lullabies connote childhood, one could reasonably con-
jecture that Brahms’s comment to Leyen speaks to his thoughts of his own
youth. Accordingly, the distant object of the opening lullaby might be a per-
sonal past that Brahms views from his sixties in pastoral imagery. Brahms
had owned Herder’s Stimme der Völker in Liedern, the book from which he
drew the epigraph to this piece, for over thirty-five years before he published
op. 117. Thus the feeling of reminiscence expressed in this piece might in-
deed reflect the act of returning to an old valued source and the memories it
evoked. It may be significant that Brahms bought the book in 1856, the year
of Robert Schumann’s death.12
We have more concrete evidence that Brahms was looking back through
the lens of folk song around this time toward his youth and youthful com-
positions. In 1894 Brahms revised and published forty-nine settings of
Deutsche Volkslieder for solo voice(s) and piano (WoO 33) that he had
composed throughout his career. In August of that year he wrote to Clara
Schumann of the Volkslieder: “Has it occurred to you that the last of the
songs is in my opus 1? Has something [else] occurred to you as well? It re-
ally should say something, it should represent the snake which bites its own
tail, thus saying symbolically: the story is now over, the circle closed. . . .
Now that I am past sixty, I should like to be as smart as I was before
twenty.”13 Brahms is referring to the andante second movement of his Piano
Sonata in C Major, op. 1, which forms a set of variations on the song
“Verstohlen geht der Mond auf” (The Moon Rises Stealthily), the final song
in WoO 33. Brahms deliberately arranged his folk song settings to imply a
return to his youth. Indeed, the act was so willful and self-conscious that he
pointed it out to Schumann, lest she miss the point.
The forty-nine folk song settings were not Brahms’s only bow to youth-
ful endeavors during the last six years of his life. At least two other sets
of pieces either drew on earlier compositions or otherwise revived long-
dormant genres for Brahms, specifically genres on which he had dwelled
during his twenties. Already in 1891 he had published his Dreizehn Kanons,
op. 113, some of which were composed for the Hamburg Women’s Chorus
in 1859, and others based on folk songs Brahms had published without
opus number in 1858 as solo lieder for the Schumann children. And his opus
 Beyond the End 171

ultimo, the Elf Choralvorspiele, op. 122, which Brahms worked on during
the summer of 1896, marks a return to an instrument and a genre in which
he had rarely worked since the late 1850s.14 All of these collections that
Brahms assembled during his last six years (WoO 33 and opp. 113 and 122)
bring together spiritual sentiments with musical types that are strongly asso-
ciated with German history: folk song, canons, and chorale preludes. At
the same time that Brahms was expressing an urge to reminisce, as in the
Intermezzi, he was returning to genres with which he had been engaged
in his youthful years of intense association with the Schumann family, while
simultaneously evoking the more distant German past. In particular, the
chorales and many of the folk songs he set in opp. 113, 122, and WoO 33
relate directly to the age of Luther and the rise of a German literary style,
and hence the beginnings of modern German culture. Spirituality, it seems,
was less ambiguous for Brahms in his sixties than it had been through most
of his adult life. Notwithstanding his offhand comments about “heathen
texts” and having read too much Schopenhauer to have faith in immortality,
Brahms displayed a strong impulse to deal in strictly Christian and over-
whelmingly Lutheran texts in his last years. At the end of his life (“the story
is now over, the circle is closed”), Brahms was cementing his place in Ger-
man artistic traditions. He was also strongly connecting his own personal
legacy to the German cultural heritage.
As I discussed in Chapter 2, even the philosophically pregnant biblical
texts of the Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, may have been originally chosen
with an eye toward unfolding political events in the Kaiserreich. Ulti-
mately, however, Brahms chose to dissociate the texts of Ecclesiastes and
Ecclesiasticus from themes of sovereign wisdom and nation building, and
constructed instead a progression from the depths of existential pessimism
(Ecclesiastes 3:19–22; 4:1–3) through an acceptance of death (Ecclesiasticus
41:1–4) to a paean to Christian love (1 Corinthians 13). Whereas many
have chosen to focus on the Schopenhauer-like pessimism and dark musical
atmosphere of the first two songs, the change of harmonic direction from E
minor to its parallel major in the middle of song no. 3 signals a strong move
away from the spirit of the first two songs. Then comes the abrupt reversal
at the beginning of song no. 4, where the closing high G-sharp of the previ-
ous song, the third of an E major harmony, is transformed without warning
into a low A-flat, the root note of a subdominant harmony in the entirely
distant and fresh tonality of E-flat major. Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthi-
ans 13 reads as a Romantic manifesto on love. Particularly in his use of the
mirror, a metaphor for our incomplete relationship that is completed only
through giving ourselves up completely (as in Christian love or in death),
Paul finds much resonance in early-nineteenth-century writings on love by
Hegel and Hölderlin.15 Not only, then, do these songs connect to the retro-
172 Brahms and the German Spirit

spective genres of the last years through their use of biblical texts, but also in
them Brahms achieves a familiar pattern from this time of returning to the
heroes of his young adulthood (the German Idealists) and “Junge Kreisler’s”
spirit of Romanticism. And just as the melancholy reminiscence of the Inter-
mezzi from the 1890s goes far beyond the feigned Sehnsucht of Brahms’s
youthful Kreislerei, the depth projected by the musical settings of the bibli-
cal texts in op. 121 far exceeds any personal emotional content or philo-
sophical weight of Brahms’s youthful biblical settings or other sacred works
from the 1850s and 1860s.

Constructing “Brahms the German”

In his 1920 Brahms biography, the Leipzig composer and music critic Walter
Niemann avers that Brahms “deepened in his mature years into a resigna-
tion which, though still virile, attempts in vain with infinite melancholy
to stave off a sense of isolation.”16 To the late Intermezzi in particular
Niemann ascribes “a quiet elegiac tone, with a soft, pensive resigned grace,
which seems to be smiling through tears. . . . These late [piano] works of
Brahms have been appropriately described as ‘children of autumn, golden
juicy fruit, full of ripe, strong sweetness,’ in allusion, above all, to their pre-
vailing mood, which is for the most part deeply resigned, weary and full of
pessimistic Weltschmerz.”17 One would be hard-pressed to find any discus-
sion of Brahms’s late works that does not refer similarly to the unmistakable
mood of resignation and melancholy to which Niemann refers. Commenta-
tors frequently point to the rapid series of deaths among Brahms’s friends
and family between 1892 and 1894 as an impetus for this autumnal mood.18
Brahms’s sister Elise and his longtime friend and confidante Elisabeth von
Herzogenberg died in 1892; the singer Hermine Spies, with whom Brahms
had developed a close working and personal relationship, died in 1893;
musicologist and friend Philipp Spitta, the conductor Hans von Bülow,
who coined the notion of the “Three B’s,” and Theodor Billroth, possibly
Brahms’s closest Viennese friend, all died in 1894. Coupled with the fact
that Brahms turned sixty in 1893, so many personal losses may well have
engendered a reflective, even resigned attitude that is conveyed by his music
of the time.
Other, less personal causes may also be adduced, however, to account
for the widely perceived melancholy tone of Brahms’s late music, some of
them musical, others cultural. Robert Morgan hears in the Klavierstücke,
op. 118, the composer’s own confrontation with the limits of the tonal lan-
guage and his coming to terms with the historical passing of the musical era
to which he belonged, “that twilight moment in Western music’s evolution
where the traditional language of post-Renaissance composition is reaching
 Beyond the End 173

the end of its long blossoming.” He concludes that “Brahms’s message

seems clear: music can continue to exist only by reflecting upon the very dif-
ficulty of its continuing existence.”19 By connecting the palpable sense of
resignation in Brahms’s late piano works (“those qualities of reticence and
regret, of melancholy and longing”) to the passing of an age, Morgan enters
into a stream of Brahms reception from the composer’s day down to our
own in which Brahms is understood to express a pessimistic reaction to
the tenor of his times, musically or otherwise. What has changed over time
are the claims of just what it was that Brahms was reacting against. For
Morgan, the impetus is strictly musical: the dissolution of common-practice
tonality. Niemann’s rhetoric seems, at first blush, to be in a similar vein.
Yet there is a decisive difference that moves Brahms’s response to his world
beyond the purely musical sphere; tears born of “pessimistic Weltschmerz”
imply a deeper and socially more immediate situation as the root of Brahms’s
resignation. A closer reading of Brahms’s place in Niemann’s larger under-
standing of German musical culture in the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth centuries reveals a strong political slant to this depiction of Brahms.
Niemann’s biography was among the most successful in the early-twenti-
eth-century Brahms literature.20 Not only was his book reprinted fourteen
times between its first appearance in 1920 and 1933, but also it appeared in
an English translation by Catherine Alison Phillips in 1929, in which form it
received seven more reprintings by 1947. This, then, was one of the most
widely read Brahms biographies in the first half of the twentieth century. As
an epigraph to his book, Niemann chose the closing paragraph of an earlier
book on Brahms, Rudolf von der Leyen’s Johannes Brahms als Mensch und
Freund (1905). Leyen was a friend of Brahms, and his book takes the form
of a personal reminiscence. In his closing, however, Leyen opens out onto
Brahms’s larger role in musical and cultural history, a position from which
Niemann chose to embark:

If ever our German nation is passing through a phase of national mourning and
tribulation—which God [may] forbid for long years to come, although, as the
history of the past teaches us, this becomes necessary in the course of ages, as a
result of external and internal enemies, in order to restore national balance—
then shall the children of Brahms’s muse, like holy angels, droop their lily
wands over mankind in its affliction, pouring a healing balm into their wounds,
and thus aid in directing our mission in the life of nations toward new and glo-
rious aims. God grant it may be so!21

Leyen’s memoir is full of references to Brahms’s patriotism, so his nation-

alistic flourish in closing comes as little surprise. Writing these words in
1905, Leyen may have sensed the growing European political tensions but
could not have foreseen the military catastrophe awaiting Germany in the
174 Brahms and the German Spirit

following decade. Nevertheless, his prescription of Brahms as a “healing

balm” is part and parcel of German cultural rhetoric at this time. Bach and
Beethoven were the more likely musical remedies, but employing Brahms in
this way was soon to become commonplace as well. For example, in a 1907
essay marking the tenth anniversary of Brahms’s death, Felix Wilfferodt
writes: “Brahms is still the representative of a non-nervous artistic language.
That [language] sets certain limits, but at the same time has its beneficial
side. . . . [I]n Brahms’s style of non-nervous musical feelings we have a rem-
edy at hand, which can be useful against the aesthetic confusion of many of
the latest compositional trends.”22 When Niemann appropriated Leyen’s
words in 1920, he was able to take the metaphor one step further: Brahms’s
music was poised to serve as a cultural model for restoring Germany’s “mis-
sion in the life of nations” following the defeat in World War I. At the very
end of his book, Niemann is explicit about where in the course of that mis-
sion Germany then stood. Having asserted that “the old opposition, Brahms
versus Wagner, . . . has long since been harmoniously resolved in the equa-
tion: Brahms and Wagner,” Niemann writes:

Wagner was the mightiest culmination and consummation of that pan-

Germanicism that collapsed in the World War with the wreck of Bismarck’s
heritage, of the “German Idea” of Rohrbach, so far as this concerned Ger-
many’s position and significance as a world power. . . . But if this “German
Idea” is to preserve its inward soundness and vitality, it requires, as a contrast
to the vast dramatic power of Wagner, which looks outward, the tranquil, inti-
mate, absolute strength of Brahms, which looks inward.23

“Brahms and Wagner” is Niemann’s way of projecting a unified national

German spirit, which, having failed to assert its outward (Wagnerian) char-
acter militarily and politically, must now turn inward to heal its wounds.
Here Brahms is the model of “absolute strength” for modern Germany.
Niemann’s appointment of Brahms to this nation-healing role is a natural
extension of the portrait of his subject that he has painted throughout the
book. Chapter 18, “Brahms als Mensch,” is full of references to Brahms’s
love of Bismarck and the German Volk, his Niederdeutsch character, and his
deeply Lutheran nature. The label Niederdeutsch (or “Low German”) is
ubiquitous in early-twentieth-century Brahms literature. Although it can be
a mere geographical designation, referring to the northwestern region of
Germany from Hannover to Hamburg, Niederdeutsch also evoked the sup-
posed original Germanic tribe of northwestern Germany on which some
ultranationalist writers at the turn of the century pinned their belief in a
pure-blooded and culturally superior Teutonic past.24 And this was not the
first time that Niemann had stressed the importance of Brahms’s German
identity. In an earlier book, Die Musik der Gegenwart (1913), Niemann sin-
 Beyond the End 175

gles out Brahms among the “classicists” of the nineteenth century not only
for his strongly stamped national character but for his racial makeup as
well.25 In fact, race surfaces in that book as a central theme for Niemann,
who takes national differences among musical styles to be natural and desir-
able, and attributes those differences directly to racial traits. He devotes
the first part of his book to an overview of conservative schools in the mid-
to late nineteenth century, dividing them into “Romanticism and Post-Ro-
manticism” and “Classicism,” of which Brahms is the central figure. But
Brahms’s classicism, Niemann immediately points out, is markedly different
from that of his Viennese forbears:
With Johannes Brahms, Romanticism and Classicism provide their first great,
truly characteristic modern master. Indeed, that is proved by an external fact.
To an ever-increasing degree, as with the great masters of Classicism and Ro-
manticism, one must first come to terms with the personality of the master in
order to comprehend his art. That is modern, and it is also modern that the
question of lineage and race [Stamm- und Rassenfrage] rises to one of the fore-
most positions in the estimation of his art. With the great Classical and Roman-
tic masters this had a much stronger effect on the predisposition and develop-
ment of their personal character than on that of their art; with Brahms—and
only with Chopin before him—lineage and race impressed a direct and immedi-
ate stamp upon his art. Only with difficulty would one hear from their music
that the proudly free and wild Beethoven comes from the sunny lower Rhine;
that Mendelssohn, master of Italian beautiful lines, comes from stormy and
melancholic Hamburg; or that the deeply inward and impetuously fantastic
Schumann comes from soft and friendly Saxony. They speak to all people, to
the folk [Volk]. In Brahms’s music, conversely, the characteristics of his lineage,
of his race, lie directly in all their power also for those who are resolved to
know nothing about his personality. Brahms, however, speaks completely
clearly only for the people of his stock.26

For fifteen pages Niemann goes on to define Brahms’s lineage and stock
(Stamm) as “Dithmarscher” (referring to the lowlands region north of
Hamburg) and “Westholsteiner” (in short, “a compatriot of Hebbel”), and
compares Brahms’s artistic temperament in turn to that of various other
North German literary figures (Theodor Storm, Klaus Groth, and others).
Generally, Niemann compares various shades of gray among these artists,
noting also their strength, resignation, and pathos.27
Supposing nationality as a predictive element for character and behav-
ior does not necessarily carry the extremely negative connotations we are
compelled to associate with such assumptions (particularly among German
writers) following World War II. Indeed, Niemann’s reference to the Volk
sounds like a throwback to the benign relativism of Herder; nowhere in
these pages does he argue for Brahms’s racial superiority, but rather argues
for his racial distinction. In the closing section of his book, titled “Nation,
176 Brahms and the German Spirit

Volk und Stamm,” Niemann pursues this line further as he praises each Eu-
ropean nationality for its defining features. But two familiar themes in Ger-
manic narratives of music history around this time emerge clearly at the end
of the book, belying Niemann’s apparently even-handed relativism. First
comes the assertion of Germany’s privileged role among nationalities, espe-
cially in comparison to the French and Italians. “For all the international
dissemination of their art,” writes Niemann, “in the last analysis we per-
ceive this one as thoroughly French, that one just as sharply as Italian. Only
our [i.e., Germany’s] classical spirit and role as artistic mediator, only our
singular capacity for sympathy that has grown through the centuries, re-
strain us in this regard.”28 Later Niemann writes of “our nation’s position in
the nineteenth century as the musical schoolmistress, as the successor to It-
aly’s centuries-long musical hegemony over other nations. Germany has be-
come the catalyst and teacher of national music in foreign lands. One gives,
the other receives.”29 For this reason, one presumes, Niemann felt comfort-
able devoting three quarters of his book overwhelmingly to German music
while spending only the fourth part on “National Music.”
Niemann’s nationalistic outlook sharpened after World War I. In a con-
clusion that he appended to the book in a 1920 edition, he blames the
decline of Romantic nationalist music on the “Neo-Romantics” and “Mod-
erns,” who “even before the war pushed everything toward international-
ism and cosmopolitanism.”30 The terms “cosmopolitanism” and “modern”
often carried anti-Semitic connotations. Whereas his racial attributions
lacked any specifically anti-Semitic tone in earlier editions of the book, the
new conclusion betrays Niemann’s growing distrust for an alleged combina-
tion of American and Jewish capitalism that was infecting musical life in
Europe:

Europe groans ever longer and thus heavier under the pressure of American
commercial culture [Geschäftskultur]. Art, too, has long been drawn into the
general mercantilism and has become a business. . . . Musical life is ruled by the
American principle of “objectivism.” If a contemporary composer does not
work purely for commercial reciprocity, if he does connect himself in some way
to a cooperative Strauss-Schillings group, then he can wait in some cases for
decades until he is also only “noticed.” To an endlessly higher degree the the-
aters are capitalistic business enterprises. As in the business leadership, so too
does business-shrewd Semitedom dominate today’s opera and operetta com-
posers. It also dominates the cultural critics of the daily press in the large or at
least in the capital cities of every European nation. This is not meant to be a
malicious or in any way anti-Semitic reproach; it is merely meant to help ex-
plain the spiritual limitations, prevailing tastes, and peculiarities of a musically
high-standing and highly gifted race, which taint in many ways the most influ-
ential art and music critics as well as the critical-aesthetic penetration of con-
temporary music and for that reason may not always be to its advantage. Ideals
 Beyond the End 177

are not dead, but they live and operate unnoticed; public artistic life has no
more room for them.31

Niemann’s disclaimer notwithstanding (“This is not meant to be a mali-

cious or in any way anti-Semitic reproach”), his segregation of “das
Geschäftstüchtige Semitentum” from “ideals” is disturbing, especially after
such racial determinism in the first part of the book. Niemann differs from
many other conservative writers of the time in that he does not condemn im-
pressionism, expressionism, and futurism outright (he even has some back-
handed words of praise for the expressionistic music of Schoenberg—whose
“race” he never mentions). But there is no mistaking how the racial distinc-
tions he draws early in his book, and the distinctions he makes between “na-
tional musics” and German music, allow for the sort of pigeonholing of
Jews into an inartistic, money-centered “race” in counterdistinction to the
German “Ideale.”32
It is here that Niemann’s comments about Brahms, both in this book and
in his Brahms biography, take on import for German Brahms reception be-
tween the wars. For various reasons, it became ever more expedient and
necessary for Niemann and his German contemporaries to extol Brahms’s
Germanness as against a Semitically tainted modernism. As the culture of
the Weimar Republic grew ever farther from traditional values, and as post-
war Germany struggled economically and politically, it was as easy to assign
the blame to the outsiders within as it was urgent to hold up models from
the German cultural past who stood for those same values that the modern-
ists seemed to be eroding. As a conservative Romantic, Brahms was a safe
bet; his musical style and personal temperament were widely understood as
Germanic by his admirers (and detractors), and his music was firmly
grounded in traditional aesthetic principles. Moreover, the well-worn com-
parison between Brahms and his German predecessors Bach and Beethoven
allowed him to be plugged into an overarching historical cultural narrative
of continuity. Wagner, to be sure, served a similar purpose to some, but his
progressive art could too easily be blamed for the excesses of the modern-
ists. The most convenient solution, as Niemann demonstrated at the end of
his 1920 biography, was to present Brahms and Wagner as two complemen-
tary sides of the German coin; now that the extroverted political aspect of
the German nature had run aground, it was time to turn to the “tranquil, in-
timate, absolute strength of Brahms, which looks inward.”
Niemann was hardly alone in presenting Brahms this way: many writers
during the first quarter of the twentieth century portray Brahms as a bul-
wark against modernism, basing their arguments, in part, on his identity
as a pure German. Whereas such assertions of German identity and anti-
modernism may have been commonplace around this time in writings about
178 Brahms and the German Spirit

icons of German culture, in Brahms reception they mark a departure from

the nineteenth-century focus on Brahms as a composer of difficult, cere-
bral, and intellectual music—all qualities of nineteenth-century modernism.
I have already cited Felix Wilfferodt’s prescription of Brahms as a “remedy”
against modernism. Somewhat later, Willibald Nagel, in his 1923 biogra-
phy, depicts Brahms as a German in distinction to the cosmopolitan art of
Liszt and the New Germans, and he goes on to ascribe to Brahms the culmi-
nation of a gradual reunion between artistic and volkstümlich expression
in the arts during the nineteenth century. Nagel writes, “In Brahms this
entire developmental process in German art repeats itself in a concentrated
manner insofar as he allowed the large forms of artistic creation to be
ever more strongly imbued with the spiritual content of general feelings
[Allgemeinempfindens].”33
Wilfferodt and Nagel represent an important stage in this story and in the
transformation of Brahms from a modernist in the nineteenth-century sense
(difficult, intellectual, rational) to an antimodernist tool in the twentieth
century. In opposing Brahms to modernism, each employs as an essential
part of his argument Brahms’s supposed German purity: Brahms the “echt
Niederdeutscher” for Wilfferodt, and Brahms the embodiment of the reuni-
fication of folk and high-art style for Nagel. Both champion Brahms for es-
sentially the same qualities that his Viennese supporters had. But many of
those supporters had been among the leading Jewish critics, composers, and
music promoters of the city, and they never expressed their support for
Brahms in such overtly nationalistic tones. What had changed was Brahms’s
adaptation to a völkisch model of musical conservatism. In some ways this
was not a hard sell, given the ample evidence of Brahms’s love for German
folk song. To Brahms’s earlier detractors who had supported Bruckner,
however, Brahms’s music was too austere, cerebral, and lacking in sympathy
with the Volk to fulfill any nationalistic function. Later antimodernist writ-
ers would turn this outlook on its head. They frequently describe Brahms’s
personality and music with the words “herb,” “knorrig,” and “grübelnd”
(dry, bony, and brooding), the same sorts of terms that had been used to crit-
icize Brahms’s music during his lifetime. Now, however, these were cited as
typical Niederdeutsch character traits, and thereby as evidence of Brahms’s
Niederdeutsch lineage. In this way they were turned to the composer’s ad-
vantage.

“Was Brahms a Jew?”

This nationalistically German image of Brahms would be jeopardized were
he shown to be anything other than a Niederdeutscher. Just such a threat
surfaced in the decade following publication of Niemann’s Brahms biogra-
 Beyond the End 179

phy, as suspicions circulated that Brahms might be not just less than Aryan
but (of all things) a Jew. Brahms reception history has been slow to ac-
knowledge or explore this phenomenon. In fact, the issue had lain dormant
since the end of World War II before several German scholars writing on
various aspects of music in the Third Reich raised possible connections
between the rumor and the Hamburg Reichs-Brahmsfest in May 1933.
Peri Arndt suggested in 1997 that the rumor of Brahms’s Jewish roots,
while never outwardly addressed, forms a backdrop against which to under-
stand seemingly unnecessary protestations of Brahms’s Germanness that
surfaced in exhibits and news articles surrounding the festival.34 Like Fred
K. Prieberg in his monograph on Wilhelm Furtwängler, Trial of Strength,
Arndt links the rumor to that festival through published comments by the
exiled German-Jewish actor and writer Paul Walter Jacob. Writing in 1934
for a newspaper in Argentina (where he lived in exile), and working from
notes written in Amsterdam during his flight from the Nazis, Jacob wrote
of “the scandal [that] surrounded the Brahms Festival in 1933, as it was
claimed that this ur-deutsche musician descended from a Jewish
Abrahamson family.”35 Arndt also cites the Zionist leader Leo Motzkin,
who went further in his Black Book: The Position of Jews in Germany
(1934) by claiming that “the great Brahms festival planned by the National
Socialists had to be canceled on account of these rumors.”36
Other sources in the musical press bear witness to the question of Brahms’s
possible Jewishness. For example, in his article for the third edition of
Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1932), John Alexander Fuller-
Maitland acknowledges the rumor by doubting its veracity, stating, “An as-
sumption that Brahms was of Jewish origin is extremely unlikely.”37 And
Roger Sessions directly cites the rumor in a 1933 article that he wrote upon
returning from Germany that fall. Writing about Wilhelm Furtwängler’s
highly publicized dispute with the new National Socialist regime over
whether or not to allow Jewish musicians to play in the Berlin Philharmonic,
Sessions lamented the Nazis’ influence on musical life in Germany, adding,
“It is rumored that even Brahms’s music has become suspect on account of a
Jewish strain in his ancestry.”38
In fact, the impetus to defend Brahms’s German heritage against the hint
of a Semitic strand in his lineage may have roots reaching back to his own
lifetime. Specifically, Brahms’s close association with Jews and the percep-
tion that he belonged to a Jewish brand of cultural elitism in Vienna had col-
ored the reception of his music near the end of the nineteenth century. Mar-
garet Notley has illustrated how completely Brahms’s detractors identified
the composer with the culturally conservative Jewish elite of the city.39 Her
most poignant example comes from an 1890 article by the music critic Josef
Stolzing in which he labeled Brahms himself a Jew: “What a pleasing specta-
180 Brahms and the German Spirit

cle awaits us when Hanslick, Hirschfeld, Königstein, and Kalbeck [all music
critics associated with the Brahms camp] again offer the palm to their great
(?) fellow clansmen Goldmark, Goldschmidt, Brahms, etc., and lead them
into the temple of immortality. Long live the music-loving and music-mak-
ing Jewry!”40
Attempts to tie Brahms to Jews came not only in the form of insults from
his anti-Semitic detractors, however; they also could come from more sym-
pathetic corners. Most famously, in August 1889 the Jewish satirist Daniel
Spitzer wrote a column from Ischl, where Brahms was vacationing, in which
he plays up Brahms’s socializing with Jews:
It is Johannes Brahms, who previously had traveled in Jewish circles only now
and then, but decided this time to spend a summer exclusively in Ischl. In gen-
eral company he is very taciturn and only mutters an occasional ironic observa-
tion; in intimate circles, however, he actively takes part in the conversation, and
since he loves humor and wit, he loves to hear and to tell specifically those
splendid anecdotes, in which the Jews so pointedly banter over their own weak-
nesses, which, unfortunately, they no longer put into circulation, in order not to
furnish sterile anti-Semitism with the sharpest weapons to be used against
themselves.41

Brahms, in Spitzer’s depiction, enjoys mingling with Jews as an outsider,

even prefers their company to society at large (“größerer Gesellschaft”).
For his part, Brahms seems to have enjoyed playing with the percep-
tion that he might be Jewish. When in August 1884 Brahms’s publisher Fritz
Simrock sent the painter Fedor Encke to Brahms’s summer retreat of
Mürzzuschlag to paint a portrait of the composer, Brahms wrote back to
Simrock: “He doesn’t want [to paint] me, I look too Jewish to him and
would have to shave my beard. But seriously I cannot do it, I have too great
an aversion to it and already I have often insulted good painters on this ac-
count.” The “but seriously” indicates that Brahms found the idea that he
looked Jewish to be comical, an impression he reinforced by joking about it
again in a subsequent letter: “Encke still drags himself around like a corpse
and complains about my Jewish face and my bad character.”42 In light of
Stoltzing’s attack and Spitzer’s ironic remarks, Brahms may have felt a need
to cloak Encke’s comments in humor, suggesting that he was well aware of
the perception that perhaps he associated with Jews too much for some peo-
ple’s taste.
Stolzing’s remark notwithstanding, there is little direct evidence from
Brahms’s own lifetime that anyone actually believed that the composer was
of Jewish lineage. Yet the rumor did not spring up only in 1933 and was not
merely a by-product of newly unleashed Nazi fanaticism (as both Prieberg
and Arndt suggest). At least as early as 1914, the fourth edition of a well-
known authority on German name origins, Albert Heintze’s Deutschen
 Beyond the End 181

Familiennamen, suggested as much by listing “Brahms” as a foreshortening

of the name “Abraham,” which is labeled “mostly Jewish.”43 This deriva-
tion is new to the fourth edition, the second to be edited by Paul Cascorbi.
Curiously, Cascorbi makes no mention at the point of the entry or in the
prefatory material (which is virtually unchanged from the previous edition
of 1906) for this new suggested derivation, which he must have realized
would raise German eyebrows.
Cascorbi’s was not the only book of names to make this suggestion. Sev-
eral sources from the second quarter of the twentieth century similarly claim
that “Brahms” can be a shortened version of the Old Testament name
“Abraham.” Hans Bahlow makes the same claim in a 1933 book on Ger-
man names, closely following Cascorbi’s entry.44 Other German authors,
however, were less willing to accept Cascorbi’s new derivation. In 1935
Gerhard Kessler cites “Brahms” as one foreshortening of “Abraham,” but
lists it as a typical usurpation of an Old Testament name by German Protes-
tants at the time of the Reformation.45 Seven years later, at the height of
the Nazi period, Konrad Krause puts a more anti-Semitic spin on this line
of thinking. In Die Jüdische Namenwelt, Krause acknowledges that Jews
shortened “Abrahamson” as a means of what he calls “name camouflaging
through word mutilation—much beloved by the Jews.” But in a defensively
worded footnote he adds, “Johannes Brahms’s name is as Aryan as the man
himself: either Brahms shortened the vestigial Brahmst of the place-name
near Hamburg, Brahmstedt, or the name is a genitive patronymic of Bramo,
the shortened form of the old single name Brandmar (‘Known by the
sword’).”46
One corner of Brahms reception did react to the Jewish rumor, partly be-
cause it had a direct stake in settling questions about his roots: studies of
Brahms’s family and ancestry. Ahnentafeln, or family trees, were common
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1898 and
1938 a number of such articles were published concerning Brahms, and sev-
eral book-length biographies carried this information as well. Already in the
first volume of his biography (1908), Kalbeck laid out much of the known
circumstances of Brahms’s immediate family going back to his great-grand-
father, Peter Hinrich Brahms, a carpenter who relocated from Hannover to
Brunsbüttel around 1750 and died in 1782.47 Much of what followed over
the next decades of Brahms studies extended one branch of the family or an-
other back beyond that date: Brahms’s mother’s side (née Nissen) could be
traced all the way back to fifteenth-century nobility.48 Only one of these
authors, however, Erwin Freitag, makes a direct connection to a Brahms
family line before the mid-eighteenth century. In his 1932 essay “Beitrag
zur Geschichte der Familie Brahms,” Freitag matter-of-factly connects Peter
Hinrich Brahms to a Brahms family line dating back to the early seventeenth
182 Brahms and the German Spirit

century in Horst, north of Hamburg. Some other studies present this family
line as one potential origin for the composer’s ancestry but find no direct
connection. Freitag is also the only Brahms-Ahnen author before the Na-
tional Socialist period who addresses the Jewish question, citing Cascorbi
directly: “The family name is written Brahmst, Bramst, and Brahms. In
many name books, as in Heintze and Cascorbi, it derives from Abraham,
Hebr. “father of the masses” (see 1 Moses 17:5), in that the name is suppos-
edly foreshortened.” Freitag goes on to offer other possible derivations
found in name books of the day and suggests that the more likely source of
the name is the city of Brahmstedt or the Plattdeutsch word Bram (bram-
ble), whereafter he dismisses Cascorbi’s derivation: “‘Abraham’ I take here
to be completely unlikely.”49 A stronger denial came from Botho Graf von
Keyserlingk in his article “Brahms und seine Ahnen” of 1938. After suggest-
ing near the beginning of his essay that Abraham may be a Protestant name,
Keyserlingk closes by stating, “It would be absurd to believe that even one
drop of foreign blood flowed in the veins of the master.”50

Defining Brahms at Mid-century

Arnt and Prieberg’s focus on 1933 notwithstanding, it appears that the ru-
mor of Brahms’s possible Jewish heritage began to circulate earlier in the
twentieth century. Even the locale of the 1933 flareup of the rumor is open
to question. Although Arndt’s essay focused on Hamburg, it is possible that
Jacob and Motzkin are referring to some other Brahms festival or to sepa-
rate instances entirely, since neither identifies where the Brahms festivals to
which they refer were meant to take place. It is possible that they are both
referring to a series of Brahms concerts that had been planned for Berlin
but were canceled because of the Jewish soloists and conductors who had
been contracted for the performances (Pablo Casals, Rudolf Serkin, Bruno
Walter, Otto Klemperer, Sabine Kelter). These names then surfaced in Vi-
enna as part of a week-long Brahms centennial festival jointly sponsored
there by Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Berlin-based Deut-
sche Brahms-Gesellschaft. In place of the Jewish Klemperer, Wilhelm
Furtwängler, president of the Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, conducted the
orchestral concerts at the festival.51
Furtwängler also delivered a (still) much-reprinted inaugural address to
the Vienna festival that provides a poignant example of Brahms reception at
the time.52 It is difficult to determine to what extent the rumor of Brahms’s
Jewish roots affected his speech. Yet it is hard to imagine that Furtwängler,
who had been closely involved with the planned Berlin concerts, was un-
aware of the potential scandal. What is clear is that Furtwängler’s essay
stands out for its conspicuous references to Brahms’s German roots and his
 Beyond the End 183

place among the greats of German music (so conspicuous, in fact, that
Alban Berg, who was present, labeled it a “Nazi-breathed speech
[Naziangehauchte Rede]”).53 Furtwängler himself was, and remains, a prob-
lematic figure for his ambivalent posture toward the Nazi regime. He not
only chose to remain in Germany but also served briefly as vice president
(under President Richard Strauss) for Göbbel’s Reichsmusikkammer, and
he provided the Nazis with a symbol of cultural legitimacy throughout the
war by conducting in both Berlin and Vienna. And although Furtwängler
actively sought first protection and then safe passage for many Jewish
members of his Berlin Philharmonic, the sheer exercise of influence may
have been his prime motivation, more so than compassion for a persecuted
group.54
Yet Furtwängler was by no one’s account a Nazi or even openly anti-Se-
mitic. Rather he believed in an idealized and purely cultural German nation
that was beyond the reach of politics and the ideology of the Third Reich.
His convictions led him to assert that “there never was a Nazi Germany—
only a Germany under the heel of the Nazis.”55 Such statements were famil-
iar enough in the years after the Second World War but are generally re-
garded nowadays as wishful denial.56 Acknowledging Furtwängler’s vision
of Germany helps to explain the conception of Brahms that he sets forth in
his centennial essay. Nearly all of Furtwängler’s essays on composers from
the German canon are laced with references to their German identity, and
many focus on this point. From the outset of his 1933 Brahms address,
Furtwängler stresses the composer’s identity as a German:
Neither in Vienna nor in the Reich—regardless of how our current political
masters think about it—should we ever forget that we belong to one and the
same cultural world, and that in music, Viennese classical composers have be-
come synonymous with the German classical composers. Nowhere else is soli-
darity and community so clearly within reach as here; and one would not be far
from the truth in saying that Brahms has become the last of the great Viennese
musicians, the last of the great German classical composers.

Furtwängler goes on to place Brahms in an explicitly German artistic

lineage:
Brahms belonged to that race of Germanic musical giants, which begins with
Bach and Handel, is carried forward by Beethoven, and in which a colossal
physical power is combined with the greatest tenderness and sensitivity. His
character and stature are thoroughly Nordic. To me he always seemed to be the
offspring of the greatest old German or Dutch painters, such as van Eyck or
Rembrandt, whose works unify intimacy, fantasy, and fervent, often impetuous
vibrancy with a wonderful sense of form. . . . This form is in itself peculiarly
characteristic of Germans, which suits Brahms, a form that appears never to be
there of its own accord but always for the sake of the “content,” a form
184 Brahms and the German Spirit

sculpted to conform with that content while exhibiting its own individual sym-
metry and charming clarity. His works are born in a wild, demonic world, and
yet how elegantly and strictly organically are they assembled! Brahms’s music is
more qualified than any other to disprove the frequent assertion that German
composers are incapable of writing music that reflects classical forms.57

Thus Furtwängler does not merely present Brahms as a German but de-
fends him as one as well. But against (and for) whom? At first glance one
might assume he is referring to foreign critics and peers among Brahms’s
contemporaries. But if one takes Furtwängler’s essay in its context—that is,
in the wake of the National Socialist power surge in Germany that year—
those who challenge Germans’ ability to write “classically” are more likely
the modernists: Debussy, Stravinsky, and others who rose to prominence in
the two decades after Brahms’s death and who outlined distinctly new, anti-
Teutonic criteria for musical aesthetics. (Excluded are German modernists
such as Schoenberg and Hindemith, who never would have challenged Ger-
man music’s classicism. But these figures are the target of Furtwängler’s op-
probrium in other essays.)
Furtwängler ultimately traced Brahms’s Germanicism to the composer’s
unity with the German Volk. Brahms, he writes, had “the special ability
to live out and to feel the great suprapersonal community of the folk.” And
he accomplished this, according to Furtwängler, through his melodies:
“Brahms . . . had the ability to write melodies that were unmistakably his,
down to the last detail, and which yet sounded like folk songs. . . . Brahms
. . . was the folk, was the folk song.”58 Little new ground is broken here;
commentators from early on in Brahms’s career had identified folk song–
like qualities in his music. Moreover, this has been and continues to be an
enduring and legitimate aspect of Brahms reception. But any focus on an
artist’s völkisch credentials in 1933 Germany warrants close scrutiny, given
the propagandistic and spiritual value of das Volk in Nazi ideology. Accord-
ingly, Furtwängler grabs our attention when he bestows the same connec-
tion between folk song and artistic style on a pair of less likely recipients:
“Wagner and Bruckner possessed the same gift, and I have no hesitation in
maintaining that it represents creativity at its highest and constitutes the
mark of a genius.” Whereas we are less likely to hear echoes of folk music in
the compositions of these two composers, völkisch rhetoric of this type was
to become rampant, especially in the cult of Bruckner that developed during
the later 1930s.59
It is revealing to compare Furtwängler’s claim of folk qualities in
Bruckner and Wagner to his critique of Gustav Mahler’s use of folk melody:
“With Mahler . . . it was quite the reverse. Mahler’s relationship to the folk
song was that of a stranger, an outsider, a man who yearned to find refuge in
 Beyond the End 185

it, a haven of peace for his restless spirit. Taking it over as it stood, he merely
created synthetic folk song.”60 Mahler is likely exhibited here for his status
as a modernist as much as for his identity as a Jew. But these two identities
were not easily separated at the time in Vienna, where by 1933 a strong
strain of anti-Semitism had pervaded the cultural battle against modernism
as it had all over Europe.61 Furtwängler’s very need to distinguish Mahler
(about whom he makes complimentary remarks in other essays) from “that
race of Germanic musical giants” is typical of a nationalistic exclusionary
attitude toward the Jews as a separate race. Anti-Semitic music critics as far
back as Wagner (in his essays “On the Jewish in Music” [1850] and “What
Is German?” [1868]) had accused Jews of merely aping German speech in a
futile effort to make themselves sound German, quickly drawing a connec-
tion to Jewish attempts to write music in the German tradition. Furtwängler
merely omits the first step. And during the early twentieth century, reaction-
ary German ideologues had forged a dichotomy between pure art, which
can only spring from das Volk, and the empty, derivative art of Jews, which
had corrupted an originally folk-based German culture. Modernism came to
be the focal point of those discontents.62
The last paragraph of Furtwängler’s address, presented in full here, sums
up this view of antimodernist Germanicism as applied to Brahms, a view
that reached its peak and could only have been articulated so bluntly in the
political climate that engulfed Austria and Germany in the 1930s:
The folk, the folk song from which Brahms descends, is German. He was able
to accomplish what he did by the strength of his Germanness. And not—this
must also be stated—because he wanted to be a German, but rather because he
was a German. He could be nothing else; and if his heart was open to all sorts
of inspirations from beyond Germany (also a typically German attitude), his
Germanic nature instinctually sought to overcome and subdue these influences.
His art, in its bitterness and sweetness, in its apparent exterior hardness and in-
ner resilience, in its imagination and abundance as in its self-discipline and
compactness, is German. He was the last musician to reveal to all the world’s
eyes, with undeniable clarity, the greatness of German music.63

However vain his attempt to separate cultural from political nationalism,

Furtwängler nevertheless strikes a resonant chord with a constant in Brahms
reception from the composer’s own day down to the present, namely, the as-
sertion that Brahms’s music belongs to an idealized cultural realm that is un-
touched by the politics not only of its own time but also of the time in which
that music is received. One year after the Brahms centennial festival in Vi-
enna, Furtwängler penned another (shorter) piece, this one titled “Brahms
and the Crisis of Our Time.”64 While much of his Vienna address is recapit-
ulated and abbreviated in this essay, the notion of Brahms as an objective
186 Brahms and the German Spirit

composer whose music speaks to posterity is more pronounced now than it

had been a year before. That much is clear from the opening paragraph:
Great artists, as we have observed more than once, often experience a gradual
change of attitude toward their environment and their own art, a change that
begins with middle age and continues thereafter. The complete correspondence
between the demands of one’s environment and the demands of one’s own self,
so easily attainable in youthful exuberance, begins to dissipate as one ages. . . .
Thus is the way cleared for the most personal and the most universally relevant
insights which such artists have to confer. We confront this process no matter
whom we choose as an example, whether we speak of Goethe or Rembrandt,
Bach or Beethoven. Bound up with this increasing inner insight is a growing
alienation from one’s surroundings, an onset of loneliness, a transcendence of
one’s own time.65

Brahms is plucked from his own time in a familiar gambit that links him
more closely to other “timeless” masters than to his contemporaries. As
the essay unfolds, in Furtwängler’s view, that from which Brahms would
have dissociated himself becomes clear: “He would relinquish neither him-
self nor his art to the spiritual crisis which has plagued Europe for the last
fifty years.”66 Read: modernism. In large part, Furtwängler is rehashing his
antimodernist thrust of a year before. But now, instead of pitting Brahms as
a child of the Volk in opposition to modernity, he places him above the fray,
as a model to whom contemporary musicians and audiences can look for
guidance out of the “Crisis of Our Time.” A side effect of this maneuver—
and perhaps an intentional one on Furtwängler’s part—is to render Brahms
apolitical, unsullied by the worldly issues of his day, as well as by its artistic
direction.
For those who sympathize with Furtwängler and accept his denial of
complicity or sympathy with the Nazis, his stance on Brahms as a
superhistorical artist is an easy fit, since it is precisely this view of Brahms’s
music that we embrace today. Brahms has maintained down to our day
the same reputation that Furtwängler affords him, as a composer of classical
instincts amid a Romantic musical climate. And Brahms is still regarded as
the “absolute music” composer par excellence. But while we may applaud
Furtwängler for attempting to isolate Brahms’s music from the offensively
nationalistic politics of the time, claiming universality and detachment for
Brahms’s art is itself a form of cultural nationalism. German intellectuals
and artists had been making such claims about German art (especially mu-
sic) since the early nineteenth century. Indeed, much of our modern attitude
toward absolute music as an abstract and elevated art form developed from
that philosophical tradition.67 One may read Furtwängler’s comments as
apolitical and therefore disassociated from Nazi ideology, but they speak to
a form of cultural nationalism that could be (and was) exploited by the Na-
 Beyond the End 187

zis themselves, that is, the elevated, transcendent, and spiritual status of
German art music. In the end it is difficult to separate cultural from political
nationalism as Furtwängler wished to do, just as it has been difficult for his
biographers and historians to agree on whether and to what degree he was
complicit in or resistant to the Nazi agenda.
Perhaps it was Furtwängler’s sort of decontextualizing that Paul Bekker
had in mind when he simultaneously published quite a different Brahms
centennial essay for the April–May 1933 issue of the progressive Viennese
music journal Anbruch. Bekker, then one of Germany’s leading music critics
and authors, and best known today for his sociological studies of music,
emigrated to the United States later in 1933 under threat of persecution as
a socialist and a Jew.68 Bekker used his essay to offer some Brahms
Rezeptionsgeschichte of his own. “It is curiously difficult,” Bekker begins,
“to reach an understanding over Brahms.” Noting a distinct sensitivity
among the composer’s devotees, even an intolerance toward divergent opin-
ions about him, Bekker surmises that the “Brahms orthodoxy” deeply loves
a beautiful but dying world for which “Brahms is certainly the last of his
stock [Stamm].” Comparing such Sehnsucht to waiting for “a second com-
ing of gods who, as everyone knows, still carry their character [Zug] but no
longer their upward-striving power,” Bekker asks, “What was it that they
had brought us?” and answers:

The present teaches us with tragic urgency: [those gods brought us] free men,
an inherently peaceful personality, the great, glorious liberalism of a demo-
cratic worldview. They push forward to the idea of liberating humanity
through faith in mankind. This was the immense impulse that they bore and
which they will bear, so long as there are people for whom these ideas and this
faith are central to existence, that is, people of art, people of culture, people of
[inalienable godly grace of personality].69

Far from thrusting Brahms into the breach of modernism, Bekker ties him
to the liberal culture that had been associated with modernity in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. His position is notable, therefore, as the
first stone on the path that would lead to later scholarship that has explored
and championed Brahms’s identity as a liberal. And whereas Bekker may
well equate “Menschlichkeit” with a German form of culture, he makes no
vain attempt to separate that cultural world from the politics of his day. In-
deed, he invokes politics directly when he comes down squarely in sympathy
with a bygone area of liberalism and praises Brahms for representing an
“opposing force” to stem the gradual dissipation of liberalism in the nine-
teenth century. By claiming Brahms for a liberal political sentiment in direct
opposition to the fascistic German nationalism of his own day, Bekker pres-
ages the process of de-Germanification that would mark Brahms reception
188 Brahms and the German Spirit

after World War II and still dominates our view of the composer today, inso-
far as these later impulses are generated by a repulsion for German national-
ism gone wild in the middle of the twentieth century.
The best-known essay from this period is Schoenberg’s “Brahms the Pro-
gressive,” previously discussed in Chapter 1. This revisionist salvo main-
tains the centrality of the classical tradition for Brahms’s style. As I noted in
Chapter 1, Schoenberg favors Brahms’s new technique of developing varia-
tion as more forward looking than Wagner’s ostensibly more progressive mu-
sical language, and thereby claims for Brahms a place of privilege in mod-
ernist aesthetics of the early twentieth century. And, as I also argued there,
the wide acceptance of Schoenberg’s view has contributed to the notion of
a super-historical, absolute quality in Brahms’s style, one that emphasizes
the universality of his expression in distinction to a more nationalistically
marked tone in Wagner. What is lost, however, in our modern adoption
of this viewpoint is Schoenberg’s motivation as a nationalistically minded
modernist. Recognizing that Wagner’s monumental orchestral sound—from
which Schoenberg’s own earlier style derived—had been overturned by the
neoclassical impulse in European music after World War I, Schoenberg
sought to ally his own scaled-back and classicized twelve-tone aesthetic with
the more austere style of Brahms. Schoenberg thereby provides an anesthe-
tized rendition of Niemann’s retreat from the defeated Wagnerianc-extro-
verted side of German culture to the Brahmsian-reflective side.
As he moves backwards in history to review the development of musi-
cal styles that led through Brahms and Wagner to his own compositions,
Schoenberg’s nationally limited outlook becomes obvious. “The greatest
musicians” between Wagner’s death (1883) and Brahms’s (1897) were
Mahler, Strauss, and Reger. Debussy and Puccini receive no mention. Like-
wise, the preceding aesthetic periods were defined by the music of Germans,
of “J. S. Bach on the one hand and of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schu-
bert on the other.” Between the periods represented by these figures, Bach’s
contrapuntal art, according to Schoenberg, was eliminated by “ruthless
propaganda” from another German triumvirate, Kaiser, Telemann, and
Mattheson, who asked composers to “write in the light manner of the
French.”70 Brahms’s achievement of an asymmetrical (and thus natural) pre-
cision and brevity in his art amounted to a reattainment of a Germanic ideal
that had been realized in the musical language of an earlier age by Mozart.
In a previous essay, “National Music” (1931), Schoenberg had made his
nationalism more explicit. Indeed, his tone at some points in that piece is
not far removed from Niemann’s: “As soon as some highly developed na-
tional art achieves a position of hegemony, one sees the stronghold exerted
on art by race and nationality, how convincingly these are expressed by art,
 Beyond the End 189

and how inseparably the one is tied to the other.”71 Schoenberg went on to
identify his music as a focal point of “the battle of German music during the
war,” adding, “nobody has yet appreciated that my music, produced on
German soil, without foreign influences, is a living example of an art able
most effectively to oppose Latin and Slav hopes of hegemony and derived
through and through from the traditions of German music.”72
Unlike his “Brahms the Progressive,” which was aired as a radio address
in 1933 and published in Style and Idea in 1950, Schoenberg’s handwritten
essay “National Music” was not published until the revised 1975 edition
of that book. By then the notion of Brahms-the-Progressive exerted a pow-
erful influence on Brahms’s historical position. Schoenberg never made
the Germanic foundation of his Brahms aesthetic explicit in that essay.
Ironically, his omission allowed a postwar musical consciousness that
wished (and needed) to downplay Brahms’s Germanness to adopt Brahms-
the-Progressive as a nationally neutral entity—this despite Schoenberg’s
own Germanocentric view of music history as expressed beneath the surface
of that essay and made explicit in his “National Music.” The nationally
neutral view of Brahms has largely persisted for over fifty years.

It is interesting to witness the aftereffects of the Nazi period on the next

Brahms year, 1947, the fiftieth anniversary of Brahms’s death, when the end
of the war was still a vivid memory. English-language writers on Brahms are
perhaps most conspicuous at this time for their silence on this subject and
for their reluctance to acknowledge the recent past. (To be fair, Anglo-Amer-
ican Brahms scholarship had never dwelled on his Germanic identity in any
pronounced way.) A striking case appears in the first English-language edi-
tion of Karl Geiringer’s widely read Brahms biography (translated by H. B.
Weiner and Bernard Miall). The translators waste no time in their de-
Germanification effort: Geiringer’s title, Johannes Brahms, Leben und
Schaffen eines Deutschen Meisters (Johannes Brahms: Life and Work of a
German Master), was rendered Brahms: His Life and Work in the first Eng-
lish edition of the book.73 Most striking, however, is the omission of
Geiringer’s nationalistic assessment of Brahms as a guardian of German mu-
sical traditions, which followed a discussion of the composer’s reticence in
literary matters. In the original German edition, Geiringer’s text reads:

His innate reserve forbade him [to discuss such things], as did his entire attitude
toward music as an absolute art, which one should not be allowed to approach
through the indirect path of literature. And whereas the artists of the “New
German school” behave like revolutionaries who are obliged to alter and better
everything, Brahms, on the contrary, felt himself to be the guardian and pre-
server of great traditions. He, who knew himself to be inseparable from the na-
190 Brahms and the German Spirit

tionality and religion of his fathers, embraces with warm love every sign of
German manner and art from earlier times, and it is his endeavor to be a useful
member in the powerful chain of the German spirit.74

Weiner and Miall completely strike the final sentence (which I have placed
in italics).
As I have touched on already, the origins of the transcendent theme in
Brahms reception, including the notion of “absolute music,” were rich with
Germanic connotations. In the hands of postwar writers, however, the Ger-
man element was quietly distilled out of the formula. Given the extent to
which the Nazis had celebrated Wagner and the difficult associations that
surrounded his music directly after the war, foreign admirers of German cul-
ture had an even greater stake in preserving the reputation of Brahms, Wag-
ner’s antipode. One late-nineteenth-century representative of those “Ger-
man musical giants” would have to be placed above the cultural traditions
that ended in the disaster of the mid-twentieth century, and Brahms was the
obvious choice.
The question was more difficult for German writers following the war,
and most of them avoided the issue as well. An uncomfortable exception
occurs in a 1947 book by Walter and Paula Rehberg. Revisiting the influ-
ence of folk song on Brahms’s music, the Rehbergs draw conclusions about
Brahms’s character that differ little from Furtwängler’s before the war:
“Considered personally, Brahms is typically German, by far the most Ger-
man composer overall.” But then the authors offer a lengthy disclaimer that
makes sense only in the context of the times:
With this statement we wish in no way to give a folk-tempered limitation,
lest we be guilty of committing the completely false prejudice of valuing a
composer according to his national origins [Bodenständigkeit]. It remains in
principle totally subsidiary to which lineage a creative agent of a world-encom-
passing and pure art belongs; the personality is always and in every case the
deciding factor.75

Thereafter the Rehbergs submit a list of nineteenth-century composers from

diverse nations, pointing out how each excelled in a genre or style that was
foreign to his own land: Mozart as a composer of Italian opera, Rossini as a
composer of French opera, Franck (born in Belgium to German parents) as
the founder of the “Young French school,” and so on. But they cannot help
coming back to “the North German in Brahms’s manner of being.” The au-
thors’ contortions become painful to witness as they try to articulate what
they hear as Germanic in Brahms’s music while remaining sensitive to the
dangers of sounding overly nationalistic so soon after the Nazi period:
In the total assessment, national elements account for absolutely nothing. The
North German in Brahms’s manner of being is thus to be regarded neither as a
 Beyond the End 191

plus nor as a minus. It is there by chance and plays no role in his meaning. But
it is a special distinguishing mark of his entire oeuvre. Above all the typically
German is sharply stamped in a good sense.76

Brahms-the-German: Is he or isn’t he? The Rehbergs do not seem com-

fortable one way or the other. Clearly they could not overlook what they
recognized and identified with in Brahms’s music as essentially Germanic;
but at the same time, they were rightly aware of the historical moment
in which they were writing and the limitations it placed on articulating
such feelings. Only a few paragraphs later they seek refuge in the newly
decontextualized confines of absolute music: “Through a consideration of
the complexity of Brahms’s manner of being, it becomes especially notable
that he was a typical, perhaps the most typical absolute musician, when one
limits this idea to music that is self-sufficient, that is not associated with
extramusical ideas.”77 Semantic parallels belie the objective status the Rehbergs
ascribe to absolute music; just a page earlier Brahms was “typically Ger-
man, by the far the most German composer overall,” and here he is “a typi-
cal, perhaps the most typical absolute musician.” But ostensibly, the Rehbergs
intend to move away from the uncomfortable discussion of Brahms’s Ger-
manness by locating him in a less overtly nationalistic category. Thereafter,
Brahms’s absolute music style is quickly elevated to a transcendent, even
a quasi-spiritual sphere: “With the rebirth of the classical forms which
[Brahms] executed in his works—by virtue of his own knowledge of their
immortal laws—singularly among the great composers of his epoch, he
fulfilled a high task and mission.”78
Just as Bekker’s association of Brahms with late-nineteenth-century liber-
alism bridged Brahms’s reputation in his own day with his political identity
in ours, the manner in which the Rehbergs used the absolute music label
marks a significant point in the transformation of that idea from its deeply
Germanic origins to its later neutral meaning. Coming as it does so close on
the heels of World War II, the Rehbergs’ case highlights the degree to which
the impetus for that transformation came from the need to forget the na-
tionalistic associations of absolute music—a maneuver that, until relatively
recently, music scholars have been more than happy to replicate under the
same inner pressure to dissociate this music (be it by Brahms or some other
“German master”) from any Germanic connotations.
Brahms has maintained down to our day the same reputation that
Niemann, Furtwängler, and Schoenberg afforded him: as a composer of
classical instincts amid a Romantic musical climate, and as the absolute mu-
sic composer par excellence. (Even recent Brahms scholars’ increasing focus
on allusion in his music does not change this fact: we are still speaking of
“music about music.”)79 But while we may applaud Furtwängler for at-
192 Brahms and the German Spirit

tempting to isolate Brahms’s music from the offensively nationalistic politics

of the time, or Schoenberg for finding purely musical qualities through
which to define Brahms’s historical role, claiming universality and detach-
ment for Brahms’s art is itself a form of cultural nationalism, as I noted
earlier.
In the end, it is difficult to separate cultural from political nationalism as
Furtwängler wished to do. Some of our own most common platitudes about
Brahms’s music—its universality, objectivity, timelessness—derive in part
from an earlier long-standing tradition of German cultural chauvinism and,
by extension, nationalism. That may (and perhaps should) be hard to accept
after World War II. A lot is at stake in admiring Brahms, and specifically in
admiring him as a “good” German—to completely subvert the more normal
historical meaning of that construction. When viewed against the back-
ground of a more openly nationalistic Brahms reception that was practiced
in Germany between the wars, Brahms reception later in the twentieth cen-
tury can be understood as an attempt to neutralize his legacy, an endeavor
born of the need to salvage something good, noble, and pure from the Ger-
man cultural tradition in the wake of National Socialism.
It is unlikely that this state of Brahms reception can change before some
more fundamental changes take place in the way we as Westerners under-
stand ourselves and our place in history. A good example of the aftereffects
of the Nazi period on Western musical identities came up in the (re)new(ed)
German capital Berlin in 2000. A mini-scandal arose when a leading Berlin
politician referred to the director of the city’s Staatsoper as “the Jew
Barenboim.”80 Daniel Barenboim responded with an essay in the New York
Review of Books in which he questioned whether the politician really un-
derstood the multifaceted nature of Jewish identity, “part religion, part tra-
dition, part nation,” adding:
It is hard to deal with, . . . and especially for a country like Germany which has
such a common horrible history with the Jews. Sadly, after spending years in
Germany, I have a deeper and deeper impression that this part of German his-
tory has not been assimilated or understood by many Germans. . . .
I expect every German not to forget this part of his country’s history, and to
be especially careful in considering it. Each German will be able to do this,
however, only if he has an understanding of his own self and the past that
helped to form it: for if you suppress an important element of yourself, you are
constrained in your dealings with others.81

Although the standpoint and emotional direction of non-Germans vis à

vis the National Socialist period in Germany is likely to be quite distinct
from that of a German, the repercussions for our cultural identity are not
that different. We too will be able to “assimilate or understand” our own re-
action to those historical events only if we do not “suppress important ele-
 Beyond the End 193

ments” of that story. These elements include the ramifications of recogniz-

ing nationalistic implications in Brahms’s music. We have suppressed that
recognition by focusing instead on the “universal” or “absolute” aspects of
Brahms’s art. But we have done so at the expense of understanding Brahms
as a German artist or acknowledging the great extent to which his identity
as a German affected his music.
 A P P E N D I X

Longer Musical Examples

196 Appendix

Example A.1 Brahms, op. 91, no. 2, “Geistliches Wiegenlied,”

bars 1–93.

Andante con moto


Alto           
R
(inverted and extended)
R (C-D-C) R (C-D-C) R

Viola            


        

 

  
 
   
       
Jo sef, lie ber Jo sef mein, hilf mirwieg'n mein Kind lein fein, Gott derwird dein Loh - ner sein, im Him - mel - reich der Jung - Sohn, Ma
frau
p dolce espress.


       
     
Piano
 
p          
           
dolce

  
       
            

 
9 R (C-D-C)
    
      

Die ihr schwe - bet um die - se
   
        
   
  

ri - a, Ma - ri - a.
p
 
        
    
  
  
 
   
 

         
  
              
             
  
  
   

I vi IV
16


               
 
Pal - men in Nacht und Wind,
  
             
         

  
  

           
  

 

      
 
  

             
                   
 
 Appendix 197

Unfolding thirds

 
23

      

             
R (inverted and extended)
  
R (inverted and extended)
  
Ihr heil - gen En - gel, stil - let die Wip - fel! Es schlum - mert mein

              
         

                 
          
p
             

29

               
Kind, es schlum - - meinKind.
mert

                                

               


 
               p          dolce

          

              
37

   
R Ihr Pal - men von Beth - le hem im Win - des brau - sen
            
p
          
                  
pp

                            
      p
 
198 Appendix

                    

44

wie mögt ihr heu - te so zor - nig sau - sen! O rauscht nicht
    
                                 
poco cresc.

                            

poco f

   scen    do
poco cresc.
   
        
       

       
50

         
al - so! schwei - get nei - get euch leis und
              
           


               
p

 
dim. poco a poco


       
mf dim.

                 
p dolce
     
   
  
           
56

      
lind; stil - let die Wip - fel stil let- die Wip - fel! Es
     
                

                  
                      
 
   

 Appendix 199

                    
62

schlum - mert mein Kind, es schlum - - mert mein Kind.

                
                
   
        
p dolce

        

         
p
       
p

dolce


            

          
69

Der Him - mels

   
                    
pp p espress.

                             3 3
 3

 pp

        
p
 
legato

                 

                  
75

kna - be dul - det Be schwer - de; ach, wie so müd er ward

          
3 3 3                       
3 3 3

   
           
                            
 

3 3 3

     
                
200 Appendix

               
80

vom Leid der Er -


de, ach, wie so mild, wie so

                       

     
                         
      
             
poco cresc.

    
        

                    
84

müd er ward vom Leid, vom Leid der Er - - de.

                     
   

                                      

            
         


               
89


Ach, nun im Schlaf ihm lei - se ge - sänf tigt

            
    

dolce


                     

   
                        
dolce





 Appendix 201

Example A.2 Brahms, op. 45, movement one: bars 1–40.

Ziemilich langsam und mit Ausdruck p legato

     
Vc. I
 
Vla. II
  
         
p legato legato
 p
Horns 
    Vc. II           

  
     
Horns
p legato
  
  
   
 
    

       
p                            
Cont. B.            
+ Org,
7
IV I V

8
           
   
          

      
dim.
    
  
       

 
dim.
             
                     

                       
dim.
   
IV iv VI
b Ger +6

14 Se - lig sind, se - lig sind, die da Leid tra -

              
  
   
  

p espr. Leid
Se - lig sind, se - lig sind, die da Leid
   
       
        
   
Se - - lig sind, die da

            

Vla. I 
+Vc. I        
 
             
Vla. II
+Vc. II pp


p
Horns
         
         
              
   
202 Appendix

           
sie sol - len ge - trö - stet, wer - - -


    
22 denn

     
p
gen, tra - gen, - denn sie sol - len ge - trö - stet, ge - trö - stet wer -

              p    
tra - - gen,


        
Leid tra - gen, denn sie sol - len ge - trö - stet, ge - trö - stet wer -

den,

             

       
27


se - lig sind se - lig sind, die da Leid,
den,

 
p
             
         
se - lig sind, die da Leid,
den, se - lig sind

                  
        


p
                 
         
    

        

         
35
denn sie sol - len ge -

 
Leid tra - gen, denn sie sol - len, sie

     
 
p


        
tra - gen,

   
Leid denn sie sol - len ge -


                
  p 
                
espress.

      
                                 
                          

 Appendix 203

Example A.3 Brahms, op. 45, movement five: bars 1–23.

                  
             
              
violins

violas  
      
p dolce dim.
        
Cellos

         
Double bass

pp



4
            
 
          
            
flutes
   
clarinets
pp     
   
   
solo

         
oboes      
p dolce
bassoons


   p 
horns
horns
         
 
bassoons

pp

         
     
soprano

Ihr habt nun Trau - - - rig - keit,

    
            
      

   

pizz.

    
           
 
pizz.


9  flute

flutes
 
  
clarinets
solo

  
      
flutes
clarinets

clarinets

      
soprano
   
Trau - rig - keit, Trau - rig -

     
     
    
  
  
       

204 Appendix

 
              
12

flutes
clarinets
      
pp
p

horns
bassoons 
             
Horns

soprano                
Keit, Ihr habt nun Trau - rig - keit; a -


       
       
arco

  
pp 
 
   
(violas)

    pp      p     

      
arco p

    
            
15

flutes

clarinets
 
    
        
horns
bassoons 

soprano                     
- ber, a - ber ich will euch wie - der seh - en und eu - er


                       
 p

       
poco cresc.

       
espress.


p
arco
 Appendix 205

              
     
18 3
flutes  p
            
clarinets
Oboe
   

   p        

soprano                
Herz soll sich freu - en, und eu - re Freu - de soll

   p m.p.
  

        
 
Ich will euch trö - sten wie
Choir
        
  
wie
     
p m.p.

             


      

  
           
21 oboe
flutes
clarinets
  
Oboe
p

     
          
  
 
soprano          
nie - mand, nie - mand von euch neh - men.

   

          
Choir
  
ei - nen
 
sei - ne Mut - ter
  trö -
   
- - stet
 

      
ei - nen sei - ne Mut - ter trö - stet

            

                 
 
         
206 Appendix

Example A.4 Brahms, op. 45, movement six: bars 1–37.

Andante
Sop.          

Alto               

p   

Denn wir ha - ben hie kei - ne blei - ben - de Statt,

            
Ten.         
Bass    p
 


   p 

   
  
  
          
                 
 

p   p
   
 
             
                
    
      


8
su - - - - - chen
  
     

   
 
 

 
  
     
  pp 
son - dern die zu - künf - ti - ge su - chen
      pp      
  
     
      
    

           
su - chen wir, su - chen

    
   
         
  
   
       
       
pp
  
                                      
           
           

16
     
     
            
wir denn wir ha - ben hie kei - ne, kei - ne blei - ben - de

  
     
       
 
denn wir ha - ben hie kei -
wir
 p
      

     
 
             
 mf          
 
  f      p    
          

     
       
     
 Appendix 207

     
22

Bar.      
Sie - he ich
dennwir ha - ben hie kei -ne blei - - ben - de Statt.

                          
dim.

ne kei - ne blei - ben - de, kei - ne blei - ben - de Statt. Statt.

      dim.       

              
  
dennwir ha - ben hie kei-ne blei - ben - de, blei - ben - de Statt.

        

              
    
dim. pp 
  
      
                    
 
                   
 
dim. molto

               
     
29
Bar.   
sa - ge euch ein Ge - heim - - - nis. Wir wer - den nicht
     

         
3

      
 pp

pp


     
   
   
              

    

   
35
Bar.
  
al - le ent - schla - - - -
            
3
      
               
3 3
 
       
 Notes

1. Introduction
1. Aufruf zur Errichtung eines Johannes Brahms-Denkmales in Wien (hereafter
Aufruf). A copy of this proclamation is found in the Guido Adler archives at the
Special Collections Division of the University of Georgia Library, Athens (MS
769 18.51). As listed on the last page of the three-page document, the committee
included some of Vienna’s leading musical figures (Gustav Mahler, Hans Richter,
Eusebius Mandyczewski, and others) and counted among its members a virtual
who’s who of Brahms’s friends in Austro-German musical life. Leon Botstein
briefly discusses the monument that was designed by Rudolf Weyr and finished
in 1908; see his “Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting,” Nineteenth-
Century Music 14 (1990): 154–168.
2. Aufruf, 1. In fact, Brahms was buried close behind the tombs of Beethoven and
Schubert and the Mozart monument, according to Walter Niemann’s descrip-
tion of Brahms’s funeral procession and burial. Niemann, Brahms, trans.
Catherine Allison Phillips (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), 154–157.
3. Aufruf, 2.
4. Ibid.
5. The concept of the symphony as society-forming was first articulated by Paul
Bekker in Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler (Berlin: Schuster und Löffler,
1918), 17–18, and later by Theodor Adorno in Introduction to the Sociology
of Music, trans. F. B. Ashton (New York: Seaburg Press, 1976), 92–95. Walter
Frisch has suggested the relevance of Brahms’s Requiem for the category of soci-
ety-forming music in Brahms: The Four Symphonies (New York: Schirmer
Books, 1996), 35–36.
6. Brahms’s close friend the composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg wrote of
opp. 45 and 55 as “our master’s two greatest, in every respect most com-
plete and effective works.” See his essay “Johannes Brahms in seinem Verhältnis
zur evangelischen Kirchenmusik,” Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche
Kunst 2 (1897): 70.
7. First published in Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ed. and trans. Dika Newlin (New
210 Notes to Pages 3–9

York Philosophical Library, 1950), 52–101; reprinted in Style and Idea: Selected
Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1975), 398–441.
8. Leon Botstein, intro. to The Compleat Brahms, ed. Botstein (New York:
Norton, 1999), 23.
9. Pinson, Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, 1934).
10. See in particular Botstein, “Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting,” 154–
168; and Notley, “Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late-Nine-
teenth-Century Vienna,” Nineteenth-Century Music 17 (1993): 107–123.
11. Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 3.
12. Ibid., 7.
13. Language, however, has not always played such a central role in national self-
consciousness. E. J. Hobsbawm eloquently argues that before the modern phase
of nationalism, language played only a minor role in identifying peoples, and the
mythological linguistic unity of a nation was a construct of the modern völkisch
movements. See his Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth,
Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 51–63.
14. Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Na-
tionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 108–109. Most lead-
ing scholars on nationalism discuss the centrality of language. See Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Na-
tionalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 44–45; and Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism since 1780. Ernest Gellner addresses the issue throughout his post-
humously published Language and Solitude: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the
Habsburg Dilemma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
15. Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, 5th ed., vol. 1, ed.
Martin Kreisig (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1914), 180.
16. See Sanna Pederson, “A. B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National
Identity,” Nineteenth-Century Music 18 (1994): 87–107. Such associations were
not limited to the symphonic tradition. On the national connotations of adagio
movements in chamber works, see Margaret Notley, “Late-Nineteenth-Century
Chamber Music and the Cult of the Classical Adagio,” Nineteenth-Century Mu-
sic 23 (1999): 33–61. Although Notley does not pursue nationalistic conclusions
herself, many of the contemporaneous sources she quotes highlight the Ger-
manic element in the tradition.
17. As quoted and translated in Richard Taruskin and Pierro Weiss, eds., Music
in the Western World: A History in Documents (New York: Schirmer, 1984),
384.
18. Wagner also expressed this formulation in the negative around this time, when
in his pseudonymously published 1850 essay “Das Judenthum in der Musik” he
asserted that German Jews like Mendelssohn (i.e., German by nurture but not
by nature) were incapable of expressing the deeper feeling that stemmed from
the soil in the person of the German folk. See Wagner, “Das Judenthum in der
Musik,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 3 and 5 September 1850, 101–107, 109–
112, reprinted in Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, vol. 5 (Leip-
 Notes to Pages 9–15 211

zig: Fritzsch, 1872), 83–108, and translated in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works,
vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Routledge Keegan and Paul, 1894),
75–122.
19. As quoted and translated in Richard Taruskin and Pierro Weiss, ed., Music in
the Western World: A History in Documents (New York: Schirmer, 1984), 384.
On Brahms, the Erklärung, and his relations with Brendel and the Neudeutsche
Schule, see David Brodbeck, Brahms: Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996) 4–5, 8–9.
20. By contrast, Liszt and his disciples Joachim Raff and Peter Cornelius tended to
set contemporary poets, including texts from their own pens.
21. I am referring primarily here to two signal studies on the origins of National
Socialist ideology that appeared in the early 1960s: Georg Mosse, The Crisis of
German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset’s
Universal Library, 1964); and Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
22. Wagner, “Das Judenthum in der Musik”; idem, “Was ist deutsch?” Bayreuther
Blätter 1 (February 1878): 29–42, reprinted in Wagner, Gesammelten Schriften,
vol. 10 (1883), 51–74, and translated in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 4,
149–170.
23. Gellner, Nationalism (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 59–62, 70
(chap. 8, “The Murderous Virulence of Nationalism”).
24. Brahms, Briefe an P. J. Simrock und Fritz Simrock, vol. 1, ed. Max Kalbeck,
Johannes Brahms Briefwechsel (hereafter Briefe), vol. 9 (Berlin: Deutsche
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917), 23.
25. I thank my colleague Mary Rasmussen for directing my attention to this picto-
rial tradition in German culture.
26. The remaining verses read as follows:

Dein Schoß soll hegen und tragen, “Thy womb shall cherish and bear
Ein Kindlein zart und klein, an infant small and tender,
Das Himmel und auch Erden who will enfold
Einstmals wird nehmen ein. earth and heaven too.”
Maria, die viel reine, Mary, the spotless maid,
Fiel nieder auf ihre Knie, sank down upon her knees;
Dann sie bat Gott vom Himmel, then she prayed to God in heaven
Sein Wille geschehen soll. that his will might be done.
Dein Will’, der soll geschehen “Thy will shall be done
Ohn sonder Pein und Schmerz. without special pain or grief.”
Da empfing sie Jesum Christum Then she conceived Jesus Christ
In ihr jungfräulich’ Herz. within her Virgin heart.

27. Brahms’s predilection for texts on the Marian legend is also attested by his mul-
tiple performances of Eccard’s “Übers Gebirg Maria geht” and the many texts
on the subject that he copied out of various folk song collections. See Virginia
Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions and His Library of Early Music (Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 114–115.
212 Notes to Pages 16–25

28. Georg Scherer, Alte und neve kinderlieder, Fabeln, Sprüche und Räthsel (Leipzig:
Gustav Mayer, 1849), 43–44.
29. The Swiss firm of Rieter-Biedermann published all fourteen in late 1864 without
opus number.
30. Printed as “Johannes Brahms: 1931,” in Furtwängler, Ton und Wort: Aufsätze
und Vorträge, 1918 bis 1954, 6th ed. (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1955), 40–52.
31. Of course, this sort of objectified music history was especially popular in the first
three decades following the war. But the aura of folk song is so central to
Brahms’s image that one needs to dig deeper than that in order to explain
Morik’s approach.
32. Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. Andreas Moser,
Briefe, vol. 2 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1912), 7, 35.
33. “Josef, lieber” is but one of various German translations of “Resonet in
Laudibus.” Like a few other of these translations, “Josef, lieber” proceeds in a
dialogue form between Mary and Joseph, interspersed with lines of the original
Latin hymn text. Both the Latin and the various German versions of this song
were customarily sung in German mystery plays on Christmas Eve and Christ-
mas Day as far back as the fourteenth century.
34. Corner, Groß-Catolischen Gesangbuch (Nuremberg, 1631); Meister, Das
katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen von den frühesten Zeiten
bis gegen Ende des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1862). Brahms
copied these texts onto a double folio that he eventually included in his manu-
script collection “Große Sammlung deutscher, schwedischer, böhmischer u.a.
Volkslieder verschiedener Quellen”; see Margit L. McCorkle, Brahms Thematisch-
Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (Munich: Henle Verlag, 1985), app. Va 3.
35. See George Bozarth, “Johannes Brahms und die geistlichen Lieder aus David
Gregor Corners Groß-Catholischen Gesangbuch von 1631,” in Brahms-
Kongreß Wien 1983: Kongreßbericht, ed. Susanne Antonicek and Otto Biba
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1988), 67–80; idem, “Johannes Brahms und die
Liedersammlungen von David Gregor Corner, Karl Severin Meister und
Friedrich Wilhelm Arnold,” Die Musikforschung 36 (1983): 177–199. See also
Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions, 16–17, 82.
36. On all of these manuscript indexes, see McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis,
app. Va, “Autograph Collections and Copies,” 695–748.
37. Ibid., app. Va 1, “Volkslieder aus verschiedenen Ländern,” 695–696; Kalbeck,
Johannes Brahms, 100.
38. McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis, app. Va 2, “Volksweisen aus verschiedenen
Ländern,” 697–699. A facsimile of page 3r is provided in Kalbeck, Johannes
Brahms, between 184 and 185.
39. On Brahms’s counterpoint studies in the 1850s, see David Brodbeck, “The
Brahms-Joachim Counterpoint Exchange; or, Robert, Clara, and ‘the Best Har-
mony between Jos. and Joh,” in Brodbeck ed., Brahms Studies, vol. 1 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 30–80.
40. The obbligato lied shows up sporadically in the art song literature of the nine-
teenth century. Although there are settings with which one can imagine Brahms
might have been familiar (examples are found among the lieder of Schubert,
Franz Lachner, and Spohr), there is no indication that these served as models. A
partial list (based only on extant copies) of nineteenth-century obbligato solo
 Notes to Pages 26–31 213

song can be distilled from Kay Dunlap and Barbara Winchester, Vocal Chamber
Music: A Performer’s Guide (New York: Garland, 1985). The only example (be-
sides Brahms’s op. 91) of a song with obbligato viola cited by Dunlap and Win-
chester is Donizetti’s French song “J’aime trop pour être heureux”—not likely a
model for Brahms.
41. I thank Bruce Bellingham for bringing this facet of the alto melody to my atten-
tion.
42. Jonathan Bellman, “Aus alten Märchen: The Chivalric Style of Schumann and
Brahms,” Journal of Musicology 13 (1995): 117. In pondering the possible rea-
sons for a lack of scholarly discussion on the chivalric style, Bellman rightly sug-
gests that “undue attention to any German glorification of a specifically martial
past still provokes discomfort.” It is disappointing that Bellman does not pursue
this issue any further in his article.
43. Locating Mary or other Madonna-like figures in a medieval setting was hardly
uncommon in Romantic poetry and literature. Shortly before he composed the
“Geistliches Wiegenlied, Brahms himself had set Josef von Eichendorf’s poem
“Die Nonne und der Ritter” (The Nun and the Knight), op. 28, no. 1, which,
much like Geibel’s translation of Vega discussed earlier, is loaded with Roman-
tic imagery in an overtly Christian guise. Just as the “Geistliches Wiegenlied”
was composed with the Joachims in mind, the op. 28 duets for alto and bari-
tone, composed between 1860 and 1862 (i.e., around the same time as op. 91,
no. 2) were dedicated to Amalie. Brahms uses nearly the same texture, rhythm,
and melodic contour there as in his Vega-Geibel setting.
44. Although the rocking arpeggio motion might obscure the effect here, the same
progression is repeated in the instrumental interlude that separates the alto’s
phrase ending in bar 21 from the beginning of her first refrain in bar 23. Now
the consecutive thirds in the piano left hand are even less adorned; the notes C–
A–F–D occur uninterrupted from bars 21–22, with only the final eighth-note F
breaking the progression down to B-flat on the downbeat on bar 23.
45. Botstein, ed., The Compleat Brahms (New York: Norton, 1999), 240.
46. The notion that Brahms was a classicist among the Romantics is so wide-
spread as to warrant no specific citation. On the connection between Brahms’s
historicism and his role as “the first truly modern composer,” see J. Peter
Burkholder, “Brahms and Twentieth-Century Classical Music,” Nineteenth-
Century Music 8 (1984): 75–83. The personal duality mentioned here is also
prevalent in the Brahms literature and forms the main subject (and title) of Peter
Ostwald’s essay “Johannes Brahms, Solitary Altruist,” in Brahms and His World,
ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 23–35. Finally,
Brahms’s pessimism has been much examined of late, particularly by Reinhold
Brinkmann in Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); and by Leon Botstein in “Time
and Memory: Concert Life, Science, and Music in Brahms’s Vienna,” in Frisch,
Brahms and His World, 3–22.

2. Religion, Language, and Luther’s Bible

1. Suk, “Aus meiner Jugend. Wiener Brahms-Erinnerungen von Joseph Suk,” Der
Merker 2 (1910): 149. The date of this conversation is provided by Oskar
214 Notes to Pages 31–35

Šourek in Antonín Dvoéák: Letters and Reminiscences, trans. Roberta

Finlayson Samsour (New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), 193.
2. Quoted in Alfred Bock, “Erinnerungen an Clara Simrock und Johannes
Brahms,” Zeitschrift für Musik 98 (1931): 478; cited in Hans Christian Stekel,
Sehnsucht und Distanz: Theologische Aspekte in den wortgebundenen
religiösen Kompositionen von Johannes Brahms (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997),
65.
3. In his last, posthumously published theories of nationalism, Ernest Gellner ex-
plains the complicated status of religion as a cultural symbol in the nineteenth
century, and suggests the nationalist ramifications of that status as well: “On
balance, the Age of Nationalism in Europe is also the Age of Secularism. Nation-
alists love their culture because they love their culture, not because it is the idiom
of their faith. They may value their faith because it is, allegedly, the expression of
their national culture or character, or they may be grateful to the Church for
having kept the national language alive when otherwise it disappeared from
public life; but in the end they value religion as an aid to community, and not so
much in itself.” Gellner, Nationalism (New York: New York University Press,
1997), 76–77.
4. Frederick C. Beiser, ed., The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xxii.
5. See Richard Heuberger, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms, ed. Kurt Hofmann
(Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1971), 34. Heuberger recounts Brahms’s own state-
ment about his childhood Bible reading (a quote I return to later in this chapter).
Beyond this anecdote, the evidence of Brahms’s religious instruction is scanty
but adequate to suggest that there was nothing unusual about it. See also Stekel,
Sehnsucht und Distanz, 15–24.
6. George Bozarth raises this possibility in “Johannes Brahms’s Collection of Deut-
sche Sprichworte (German Proverbs),” in Brahms Studies, vol. 1, ed. David
Brodbeck (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 2.
7. Ibid., 5.
8. Religious issues continued to engage Brahms, and he sought stability through
maintaining some basic socio-religious activities. Christmas Eve away from
Hamburg, Stekel notes, was nearly always spent in the home of some other fam-
ily, and Brahms frequently agreed to be the godparent to his friends’ children, in-
cluding Felix Schumann (1855), Adolf Schubring (1856), and Johannes Joachim
(1867).
9. Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Heinrich und Elisabet von Herzogenberg,
2 vols., ed. Max Kalbeck, Briefe, vol. 1 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft,
1907), 1:123.
10. Ibid., 1:199–200.
11. Those comments may be found ibid., 2:272; Brahms, Briefe an Fritz Simrock,
vol. 4 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1919), 195; and Gustav Ophüls,
Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft,
1921), 44.
12. Briefwechsel mit Herzogenberg, 1:200.
13. Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz, 67.
14. Grimm, Reden und Abhandlungen, vol. 1, Kleinere Schriften, 2d ed. (Berlin:
 Notes to Pages 35–40 215

Ferdinand Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1879), 219. Joseph Widmann also

relates a conversation in which Brahms discussed a theological reform move-
ment in Switzerland at that time, a movement that sought to reconcile the secu-
lar tendencies of Strauss and Feuerbach with more orthodox belief. Brahms
opined that the reformers would be “unable to satisfy either religious yearnings
on the one hand, or a philosophy striving for complete freedom on the other.”
Whereas his comment is ambiguous and ultimately unilluminating, the fact that
he was aware of this movement at all is striking. Widmann, Johannes Brahms in
Erinnerungen (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1898), 99–100.
15. On Brahms’s markings in his Bible, see Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz, 65–69;
reprinted as “Brahms und die Bibel—historisch-theologische Aspekte,” in
Brahms-Studien, vol. 11, ed. Martin Meyer (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1997),
49–54. On the pocket notebook (A-Wst HIN 55.733), see chap. 2 of my “Brahms,
the Bible, and Post-Romanticism: Cultural Issues in Johannes Brahms’s Later
Settings of Biblical Texts, 1877–1896” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994),
44–72.
16. Büchner, Real- und verbal-Bibel-concordance, 335, §21.5.
17. See Stekel, Sehnsucht und Distanz, 65–66.
18. Brahms, Briefe, vol. 3, ed. Wilhelm Altmann (1908), 7–8.
19. Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Otto Dessoff, pt. 2, ed. Carl Krebs,
Briefe, vol. 16 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1922), 184.
20. Johannes Brahms im Briefe an Widmann et al., ed. Max Kalbeck, Briefe, vol. 8
(Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1915), 104–105.
21. Heuberger, Erinnerungen, 34.
22. Rudolf von der Leyen, Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund (Düsseldorf:
Karl Robert Langeweische, 1905), 31–32.
23. Abell, “Brahms as I Knew Him,” Etude 49 (1931): 852. Unfortunately, Abell is
not an altogether trustworthy source; in a later book, Talks with Great Com-
posers (London: Spiritualist Press, 1955), he offers accounts of meetings with
several important turn-of-the-century composers (Brahms and Joachim among
them) that are highly fanciful and probably have little if any basis in reality. Nev-
ertheless, Abell’s comments about Brahms and Schumann in the 1931 Etude ar-
ticle resonate with the quotation from Leyen and bear none of the fantastical
flavor of his later book.
24. Niemann, Brahms, trans. Catherine Alison Phillips (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1929), 420. For a similar conflation of the Heuberger and Leyen quotations,
see Rudolf Gerber, “Das ‘Deutsche Requiem’ als Dokument Brahmsscher
Frömmigkeit,” Das Musikleben 2 (1949): 182.
25. Stekel has also assembled convincing evidence that Schumann’s illness height-
ened his spiritual awareness (and delusions). He further makes the interesting
and important observation that in an Erinnerungsbüchlein he kept for his chil-
dren, Schumann wrote, “Studiously [read] the Bible, especially Job and Ecclesi-
astes” (Sehnsucht und Distanz, 33). These two books were among those that
Brahms most heavily marked in his Luther Bible.
26. Schumann, “Neue Bahnen,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 28 October 1853,
185–186.
27. Christopher Reynolds, “A Choral Symphony by Brahms?” Nineteenth-Century
216 Notes to Pages 40–45

Music 9 (1985): 3–25. Reynolds provides the most up-to-date and thorough
account of the symphony/sonata/concerto that Brahms wrote in response to
Schumann’s attempted suicide, and its reuse in the First Piano Concerto, op. 15,
and in the Requiem.
28. John Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 184–190.
29. Ibid., 186.
30. Hernried, “Brahms und das Christentum,” Musica 3 (1949): 18–21; Gerber,
“Das ‘Deutsche Requiem’ als Dokument Brahmsscher Frömmigkeit,” 181.
Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 2:234.
31. On the surface there might seem to be a contradiction at work here, for Brahms
was deeply committed to the laws of tonal harmony and classical form, an aes-
thetic disposition that defined him for better or worse in distinction to the New
Germans. Yet even in such matters, Brahms avoided becoming the head of an or-
thodox school. He declined various offers to take faculty positions in conserva-
tories (indeed, he took on few composition pupils during his career) and resisted
committing his ideas about music into writing. Form and tonality were less a set
of rules to Brahms than a great tradition to which he felt he belonged. More spe-
cifically, they were part of a German cultural tradition, as were Protestantism
and many other aspects of the North German society in which he was reared.
32. Brahms, Briefe, vol. 3, 7–8.
33. Ibid, 10.
34. Arndt, Meine Wanderungen und Wandelungen mit dem Reichsfreiherrn Hein-
rich Karl Friedrich von Stein (Berlin: Weidmann, 1869), 202. Arndt’s book was
not published until 1869. Brahms purchased the book secondhand at some un-
known date, making it difficult to know whether he marked Arndt’s remark dur-
ing the years around 1870, when those comments would have had special reso-
nance, or at a later date.
35. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, trans. R. F. Jones and G. H. Turnbull,
ed. George Armstrong Kelly (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 47–48.
36. Ibid., 59.
37. Townson, Mother-Tongue and Fatherland: Language and Politics in German
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 92.
38. Scherer, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin: Knaur, 1885).
39. Brahms owned two posthumous publications of Scherer’s (1841–1886), each
apparently sent to Brahms by Scherer’s daughter Maria, who inscribed the
books “in herzlicher Verehrung” and “mit herzlichsten Grüßen,” respectively.
The books are Kleine Schriften (Berlin: Weidmann, 1893) and Karl Müllenhoff:
Ein Lebensbild (Berlin: Weidmann, 1893). See Kurt Hofmann, Die Bibliothek
von Johannes Brahms: Bücher und Musikalienverzeichnis (Hamburg: Karl Di-
eter Wagner, 1974), 100. Many thanks to Rose Mauro, who brought to my at-
tention the connections among Brahms, Billroth, Scherer, and the philologian
Erich Schmidt.
40. Scherer, “Die deutsche Spracheinheit,” in Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Geschichte
des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland und Österreich (Berlin: Weidmann, 1874),
45; quoted in Claus Ahlzweig, Muttersprache-Vaterland: die deutsche Nation
und ihre Sprache (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 159. Ahlzweig sees in
 Notes to Pages 46–53 217

Scherer (among other nineteenth-century Sprachwissenschaftler) “all the ele-

ments of linguistic nationalism.”
41. Scherer, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 9th ed. (Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1902), 278.
42. Ibid., 276.
43. Ibid., 36.
44. Gellner, Nationalism, 77. See also Gellner’s earlier Nations and Nationalism
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
45. Of further interest on this point is Benedict Anderson’s notion of “imagined
communities,” whose origins he specifically traces to the advent of capitalist
print media in Europe around 1500. Anderson even singles out Martin Luther
as “the first best-selling author.” See Anderson, Imagined Communities: Re-
flections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 43.
46. Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms, 10–11. H. 63, the 1885 Platt-
deutsch New Testament, now belongs to a private collection in Hannover. See
ibid., xxxii.
47. Hofmann does not list the 1526 Pentateuch, which Brahms listed in his own
“Fair Copy” catalog (A-Wst Ia 67.338), made sometime around 1890 according
to George Bozarth in “Brahms’s Lieder Inventory of 1859–60 and Other Docu-
ments of His Life and Work,” Fontes Artis Musicae 30 (1983): 107. Read from
one end, this notebook contains an inventory of the books Brahms owned; read
from the other, it is an inventory of his musical scores. Four Bibles are listed on
the “B” page of the book inventory in the following order: H. 59, H. 63, the
1526 Plattdeutsch edition, and H. 61.
48. And among those nine, two are barely marked (Psalms 1 and 8 merely have their
headings underlined, with no specific passages marked), and two more are texts
he set to music (Psalm 51 of the motet “Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz,”
op. 29, no. 2; and Psalm 126:5–6 from Ein deutsches Requiem, movement two).
49. OT here stands for “Old Testament,” indexing the separate run of page numbers
for the three parts of his Luther Bible. Accordingly, AP stands for pages of the
Apocrypha and NT for those of the New Testament.
50. On the Missa and its relationship to op. 74, no. 1, see Robert Pascall, “Brahms’s
Missa Canonica and Its Recomposition in His ‘Warum,’ Op. 74, No. 1,” in
Brahms Studies, vol. 2, ed. Michael Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1985), 111–136. The other texts in the motet are Lamentations 3:41,
James 5:11, and Luther’s chorale “Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin.”
51. At this point it must be noted that the close connections between the notebook
and Brahms’s markings in his 1833 Bible (many of the same passages are refer-
enced in each) are not shared by Brahms’s copy of the Büchner concordance and
his markings therein. Although there may be some general overlap in subject
matter, none of the entries marked by Brahms in Büchner refer to specific pas-
sages that he also marked or copied in his Bible and notebook respectively. Nor
for that matter do the marked Büchner entries correspond to any biblical pas-
sages that Brahms set to music. All of this suggests that Brahms did not use the
concordance as a tool for finding texts in the Bible to set to music or to facilitate
his Bible reading. He seems instead to have read entries in Büchner for their own
sake, as yet another source that shed light on religious issues.
218 Notes to Pages 53–59

52. These notebooks are located at the Vienna Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, where
their shelf numbers are (poetic notebooks) HIN 55.734, Ia 79.563, Ia 79.564,
and (biblical notebook) HIN 55.733. For a rough list of the contents from
all four notebooks, see Bozarth, “Brahms’s Lieder Inventory,” 109–112. These
four notebooks were only some of many such text collections maintained by
Brahms; others include the collection of sayings by poets, philosophers, and oth-
ers (mostly from among the Romantics) titled “Des jungen Kreislers
Schatzkästlein,” and a collection of “Deutsche Sprichworte” (not to mention
the previously discussed collections of melodies and texts to German folk songs
that Brahms copied throughout his life). Four notebooks made up the
“Schatzkästlein”; of these, we know the whereabouts of only one (A Wst, Ia
79.562). See Carl Krebs, ed., Des Jungen Kreislers Schatzkästlein. Aussprüche
von Dichtern, Philosophen und Künstlern. Zusammengetragen durch Johannes
Brahms (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1909).
53. There was clearly writing on the first twelve pages; each contains partial letters
and word fragments, none of which, unfortunately, I found intelligible upon ex-
amining the document. See also Bozarth, “Brahms’s Lieder Inventory,” 109–
110.
54. The fourth and final text was not biblical: Luther’s chorale “Mit Fried’ und
Freud ich fahr dahin.”
55. “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may re-
ceive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
56.
Wisdom of Solomon 2:4 Unser Leben fähret dahin, als wäre eine Wolke da
gewesen
Jeremiah 8:20 Die Ernte ist vergangen, der Sommer ist dahin
Psalm 35:14 Ich ging traurig, wie einer, der Leid trägt über
seine Mütter
2 Corinthians 7:4 Ich bin erfüllet mit Trost, ich bin überschwänglich
in Freuden, in aller unserer Trübsal.
57. Brahms marked only two texts with Trost themes in his Bible: Psalm 51:14
(“Tröste mich wieder mit deiner Hülfe, und der freudige Geist enthalte mich”)
from the third part of the motet “Schafe in mir Gott,” op. 29, no. 2, and Ecclesi-
astes 4:1 (“und siehe, da waren Tränen derer, die Unrecht litten, und hatten
keinen Tröster; und die ihnen Unrecht täten, waren zu mächtig, daß sie keinen
Tröster haben konnten”) from the second of the Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121,
no. 2. Thus, with the exception of the three Trost texts on folio 14v of his note-
book, Brahms marked only those Trost texts in his Bible that he eventually set to
music. In other words, this theme seems to have appealed to his musical in-
stincts, beyond its biblical ramifications.
58. In the case of some of the texts cited here, Brahms marked more than the verse
or verses quoted here.
59. Brahms also marked three passages under the entry “Bauen” in the Büchner Bi-
ble Concordance, all of which adhere to these conventional uses of the house
metaphor (Büchner, Real- und Verbal-Bibel-Concordanz, 129). The passages are
Proverbs 24:3 (“A house is built through wisdom and maintained through un-
 Notes to Pages 62–71 219

derstanding”); 1 Peter 2:5 (“And like living stones, let yourself too be built into
a spiritual house”); and Psalm 127:1 (“Unless the Lord builds the house, those
who build it labor in vain”).
60. That reference is apparent in such thoughts as Ecclesiasticus 41:8–11 (5–7)
(which Brahms did not copy into his notebook): “5The children of sinners are
abominable children, and they frequent the haunts of the ungodly. 6The inheri-
tance of sinners’ children shall perish, and their posterity shall have a perpetual
reproach. 7The children will complain of an ungodly father, because they shall
be reproached for his sake.”
62. The actual citation at the bottom of 16v reads “NB Weisheit Salomos/Kap. 8
Gebet eines Königs.” The chapter listed there (8) is clearly a mistake and should
read 9. Chapter 8 does not contain a “prayer” but rather closes with the words
“so I appealed to the Lord and implored him, and with my whole heart I said
. . .” Immediately thereupon follows the “Gebet” as it is copied (with the correct
citation of chapter 9) on folios 18v–19r.
63. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4:111.
64. Ibid., 444–445.
65. I have argued elsewhere that Brahms used this text in op. 121 to overturn the
Schopenhauerian pessimism of the bleak statements from Ecclesiastes in songs 1
and 2, all in a reaffirmation of his youthful Romantic outlook. See my “Brahms
on Schopenhauer: The Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, and Late-Nineteenth-Cen-
tury Pessimism,” in Brodbeck, Brahms Studies, 1:170–188.
66. On Brahms’s political outlook toward Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Em-
pire, see Margaret Notley, “Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late-
Nineteenth-Century Vienna,” Nineteenth-Century Music 17 (1993): 107–123.

3. Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45

1. MacDonald, Brahms (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 196.
2. See the discussion of a possible chronology for the notebook HIN 55.733 in
Chapter 2.
3. Suffice it for now to mention that the ambiguous status of C-sharp in these
bars—now descending to C natural as if a flat six (bars 37–40), now rising to D
natural as if a leading tone (bar 42)—is no localized matter; it relates strongly
and directly to some of the most significant harmonic, formal, and expressive
points in the Requiem. I return to these later in the chapter.
4. These notions are covered by Michael Musgrave in Brahms: A German Re-
quiem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 24–34. The identifica-
tion of the “hidden” chorale originated with Siegfried Ochs in his preface to the
Eulenberg Edition score of op. 45 (page iv). There, Ochs reported that Brahms
had mentioned to him the presence of a “well-known” chorale melody in the
first two movements of op. 45. According to Ochs, Brahms also said: “If you
can’t hear it, it doesn’t matter much. You can find it in the first measures and in
the second movement.” Ochs deduced that Brahms was referring to the chorale
“Wer nun den lieben Gott läßt walten,” which shares several characteristics with
the passages to which Brahms alluded. Many years later, in his published recol-
lections, Ochs embellished this account: “[Brahms] also called my attention to
220 Notes to Pages 72–76

the fact that the chorale ‘Wer nun den lieben Gott läßt walten’ lay at the root of
the entire work.” Ochs, Geschehenes, Gesehenes [Leipzig: Grethlein, 1922),
302. For a divergent idea on the chorale’s identity, see Christopher Reynolds, “A
Choral Symphony by Brahms?” Nineteenth-Century Music 9 (1985): 3–26. The
so-called “selig” motive was first postulated by William Newman in “A Basic
Motive in Brahms’s ‘German Requiem,’” Music Review 24 (1963): 190–194,
and was further developed by Michael Musgrave in “Historical Influences
on Brahms’s Requiem,” Music and Letters 53 (1973): 3–17. See also Walter
Westafer, “Overall Unity and Contrast in Brahms’s German Requiem (Ph.D.
diss., University of North Carolina, 1973).
5. An autograph text page (26.9 × 34.3 cm) for op. 45 has been widely interpreted
as a preexisting blueprint for its musical composition, because the opposite side
of the sheet contains a sketch to the song “Liebe kam aus fernen Landen,”
op. 33, no. 4, composed in 1861. As this sheet contains the texts for all seven
movements of the Requiem, that date suggests that the entire text was planned
long before the first completed music to the piece, the fourth movement which
Brahms mentioned to Clara Schumann in April 1865. This theory was first
proposed by Kalbeck, who supposed the text had been partially collected by
Brahms, put away and lost after a walking tour of the Harz Mountains in 1861,
and rediscovered by the composer while staying in Hamburg in 1865 following
his mother’s funeral (Johannes Brahms, 2: 258–261). Siegfried Kross, however,
has argued convincingly that the sheet was probably compiled after the first six
movements were composed (its physical proximity to the sketch of op. 33, no. 4,
notwithstanding), and that rather the texts were written down by Brahms at the
time he composed movement five as an aid in determining where to place this
added movement. Kross, Die Chorwerke von Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Max
Hesses Verlag, 1958), 221–222.
6. To wit: excepting the brief mezzo forte passage at bars 33–34 in the strings,
the dynamic range is never marked above piano (and frequently at pianissimo);
the tempo is Langsam throughout; and the frequent solo wind phrases and pizzi-
cato string figures convey a sense of chamber music at many points in the move-
ment.
7. One cannot speak of a modulation here; only the viola’s C-sharp in bar 18 hints
at D major, but this is too brief and localized to sound like more than a second-
ary viio7 harmony within a still strong G major.
8. Note that the soprano has just repeated the tritone C–Få within a D dominant
harmony only a few bars before (14–16), a defining marker for the key of G.
9. On the recapitulatory overlap in Brahms’s music, see Peter H. Smith, “Liquida-
tion, Augmentation, and Brahms’s Recapitulatory Overlaps,” Nineteenth-Cen-
tury Music 18 (1994): 237–261.
10. Steinberg, “Ein deutsches Requiem for Soloists, Chorus, and Orchestra,
Op. 45,” in The Compleat Brahms, ed. Leon Botstein (New York: W. W. Norton,
1999), 375–376.
11. Ibid., 378.
12. Brahms to Clara Schumann, April 1865, in Clara Schumann-Johannes Brahms
Briefe, ed. Berthold Litzmann, vol. 1 (1853–1871) (Leipzig: Breitkopf and
Härtel, 1927), 504; the comment to Dietrich is recounted in his Erinnerungen an
 Notes to Pages 76–81 221

Johannes Brahms in Briefen besonders aus seiner Jugendzeit (Leipzig: Otto Wigand,
1898), 60.
13. Levi is quoted by Max Kalbeck in Johannes Brahms, 3d expanded ed. (1921;
reprint, Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976), 2:220. Accounts of the Requiem’s
Entstehungsgeschichte are numerous. Michael Musgrave summarizes the de-
tails clearly and succinctly in Brahms: A German Requiem, 4–13. Following the
lead of Kalbeck, most scholars believe the Requiem originated sometime in the
1850s, was substantially planned out by 1861, and was brought to completion
between 1865 and 1867. See Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 2:214–232; Kross, Die
Chorwerke von Johannes Brahms, 1958), 208–218; and Klaus Blum, Hundert
Jahre Ein deutsches Requiem von Johannes Brahms (Tutzing: Hans Schneider,
1971), 91–108.
14. Letter of January 1866, quoted in Alfred Orel, Johannes Brahms und Julius
Allgeyer: Eine Künstlerfreundschaft in Briefen (Tützing: Hans Schneider, 1964),
39.
15. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 2:218.
16. “I dispute that in no. 3 the themes of the various sections have something to do
with one another. (With the exception of [one] little motive.) If it is indeed so (I
cannot recall anything intentional): for this I want no praise, rather I confess
that my thoughts do not take flight far enough in my work, and thus frequently
return unintentionally to the same ideas.” Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel
vol. 9, ed. Max Kalbeck (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1915), 213–
214.
17. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Liter-
ature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 36.
18. Ibid., 37.
19. Kermode, “Apocalypse and the Modern,” in Visions of the Apocalypse: End
or Rebirth? ed. Saul Friedlander et al. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 84.
20. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 64.
21. Hoffmann “Review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s
Musical Writings: “Kreisleriana,” “The Poet and the Composer,” “Musical Crit-
icism,” ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1989), 234–252. See also Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute
Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 42–46.
22. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 12.
23. Ibid., 7.
24. Carl Dahlhaus, “Zur Entstehung der romantischen Bach-Deutung,” in
Klassische und romantische Musikästhetik (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1988), 124.
25. For an example, see Musgrave, Brahms: A German Requiem, 23–26.
26. It is worth noting that here, more than anywhere else in the Requiem, one hears
an audible connection to J. S. Bach’s cantata BWV 106, Gottes Zeit ist die
allerbeste Zeit, a work that is often cited as a precursor and potential model for
op. 45. Amid a less chromatic musical language and steadier harmonic direc-
tion, Bach too begins with repeated notes in the bass and suspensions in middle-
range strings (viola da gambas) in a work that is more overtly concerned with
time, as the word “Zeit” in its title suggests.
222 Notes to Pages 81–92

27. Although that pitch is actually present in the horn, it is too far removed
timbrally to serve as the head of the descending line carried out by cellos 1 and 2.
28. Schubring, Schumanniana, 12, as cited in Blum, Hundert Jahre Ein deutsches
Requiem, 81.
29. Interestingly, Mendelssohn’s Fifth, though composed in 1828–1830, was only
published posthumously in 1868, the very year of the Requiem’s official pre-
miere. Thus it could not have served as a model for the opening of op. 45; the
two works merely partake similarly of the use of musico-religious symbolism.
30. Even after the complete cadence to the tonic F in bar 13, D-flat doggedly per-
sists, now as an upper neighbor to C in viola 2, turning what would otherwise be
an unremarkable (albeit darkly scored) V7 harmony into a prolonged viio7 sus-
pended above the tonic F pedal. In the primarily diatonic choral material that
follows, D-flat is introduced as a minor-mode inflection of a IV chord in bar 34.
It then hangs on, re-spelled as a C-sharp in bars 37 and 39, producing an
unfulfilled dominant of D, the relative minor, a function it only realizes in bar 42
(now as part of a passing viio7 over a tonic F pedal).
31. There is a conventional cadence to the tonic in bar 73, during the baritone’s re-
prise of the opening line, but this comes at mid-phrase, where the same melodic
close to D had been weakened by a B-flat major (VI) harmony in bar 8.
32. Although the beginning of movement four is more stable, the descending melody
in the winds at bars 1–4 is an inverted version of the soprano’s initial phrase in
bars 4–8, thus slightly confusing the sense of where the movement starts (albeit
in an abstract way), or at least lessening the strong sense of a beginning.
33. The defining element in this sequence is the descending tetrachord in the second
and third trombones. The model for the sequence is therefore prefigured by the
first violas in the previous phrase, at bars 62–64.
34. Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis: Concertos and Choral Works (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1981), 304–305. In a parenthetical note Tovey opines,
“The resemblance of its preamble to the main theme of Ex. 8 [the movement 2
fugue] is accidental: a theme cannot purposely refer across five [sic] intervening
movements to a declamatory formula without collateral evidence in the con-
text.”
35. In his Bible, Brahms drew lines in (or otherwise marked) substantial portions of
chapters 40–55 in Isaiah, particularly 40–45.
36. The length of this section precludes reproducing a musical example. Rather, the
reader is encouraged to consult the published score.
37. For example, the augmentation that begins motet op. 29, no. 2 (“Schaffe in mir,
Gott”); the double canon at the ninth in the “Geistliches Lied,” op. 30, for cho-
rus and organ; or the various augmentations and inversions in the concluding
fugue to the Variations on a Theme of Handel, op. 24.
38. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12, no. 40 (4 and 11 July 1810): 630–642,
625–659; translated by F. John Adams and reprinted as “Review of the Fifth
Symphony,” in Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, ed. Eliot Forbes,
Norton Critical Score (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 150–163 (quote 161).
39. Ibid., 152. This phrase in particular found resonance in Schumann’s “Neue
Bahnen” essay of 1853: “If he directs his magic wand where the power and
masses of the choir and orchestra can lend him their strength, then we will have
 Notes to Pages 93–101 223

before us wonderful glimpses into the secrets of the spiritual realm.”

Schumann’s addition of the chorus to the instrumental forces Hoffmann had in
mind is especially felicitous for relating the C major breakthrough from move-
ment six of the Requiem to the same moment in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Robert Schumann, “Neue Bahnen,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 28 October
1853, 185–186.
40. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde A 116. A facsimile of this side of the sheet ap-
pears in Robert Haven Schauffler, The Unknown Brahms: His Life, Character,
and Works (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933), opp. 348.
41. M. H. Abrams offers a concise discussion of the destruction and renewal theme
and apocalyptic traits in the Book of Daniel and Revelations. See Abrams, Natu-
ral Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New
York: Norton, 1971), 37–46.
42. Ibid., 36.
43. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 100.
44. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 36.

4. The Triumphlied, Op. 55

1. This was a two-room apartment at Postgasse 6. Max Kalbeck, Johannes
Brahms, 2:227.
2. Ibid., 406–407. One cannot speak of Brahms “furnishing” his apartment; that
was done by his landlady, Frau Celestine Truxa.
3. Viktor Miller zu Aichholz, ed., Ein Brahms-Bilderbuch, with explanatory text
by Max Kalbeck (Vienna: R. Lechner, 1905), 69–89. For these pages, Kalbeck’s
commentary closely matches the relevant passages from his Brahms biography
of 1904–1912. The other pictorial record can be found in Maria Fellinger,
Brahms-Bilder (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1900).
4. The room that eventually served as the library had originally been Brahms’s bed-
room until he had his collection of books and scores sent from Hamburg in
1877. At that time he acquired the third room, which became his new bedroom.
Kalbeck, Brahms, 2:408.
5. Indeed, in the context of Aichholz’s book, this is “The End” for Brahms; the re-
mainder of the book is given over to images from his funeral and burial.
6. Kalbeck, who meticulously catalogues the art in the other rooms of the apart-
ment, mentions only Cornelius’s drawing in the library. Aichholz, Ein Brahms-
Bilderbuch, 88.
7. Herman Riegel, Cornelius: Der Meister der deutschen Malerei, 2d ed.
(Hannover: Carl Rümpler, 1870), 419.
8. Josef Viktor Widmann relates Brahms’s remarks about the Triumphlied when
it was performed for the consecration of the new Zurich Tonhalle on 20 Octo-
ber 1895. “The joyous satisfaction that the successful performance brought
[Brahms],” writes Widmann, “was so great that on the way home from the con-
cert he himself began to speak about this one of his creations, which occurred
very rarely with him. He drew my attention to details in the work and asked me,
among other things, whether I had correctly heard how, in the second chorus
[i.e., movement], at the sounding of the melody: ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ the vic-
224 Notes to Pages 101–104

tory was pronounced by all the bells, and a celebratory Te Deum swept over the
land?” Widman, Erinnerungen an Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel,
1898), 111.
9. Kretschmar, “Neue Werke von J. Brahms,” Musikalische Wochenblatt 9 (1874):
148.
10. Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen Trachtungen über dies Jahr: Eschatologische
Visionen im Triumphlied von Brahms,” in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine
Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1995), 640.
11. Siegfried Kross, in his landmark study Die Chorwerke von Johannes Brahms
(Berlin: Max Hesses Verlag, 1963), holds the Triumphlied, and Brahms’s only
other overtly patriotic work, the Fünf Gesänge für Männerchor, op. 41, in singu-
larly low esteem (148–161 and 315–333). He blames Brahms’s ambivalence
toward op. 55 for the composer’s decision to take up the project of the
Schicksalslied at the expense of completing the Triumphlied for over a year.
Klaus Häfner, one of the Triumphlied’s more recent champions, writes of Kross’s
stance as the “predisposition of the postwar German toward his history, above
all his recent history, which he rejects and denies, and thereby takes every sort of
patriotism for unpleasant chauvinism.” Häfner, “Das Triumphlied, op. 55, ein
vergessene Komposition von Johannes Brahms,” in Johannes Brahms in Baden-
Baden und Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe: Badischen Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe, 1983),
84.
12. See Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen Trachtungen.”
13. Kalbeck discusses the Triumphlied in Johannes Brahms, 2:343–359.
14. Ibid., 349. Krummacher is particularly unconvinced of Scholz’s authority on
the matter, since Kalbeck only added this corroborating story as a footnote in
the second edition of his biography. Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen
Trachtungen,” 638. In fact, Kalbeck did get it wrong, but not in a manner that
negates his point. Peter Petersen offers a strong rebuttal to Krummacher’s think-
ing on the “great whore” issue, arguing convincingly that, despite botching the
evidence, Kalbeck’s claim was correct, and the missing line from Revelation 19:2
does indeed fit Brahms’s orchestral figure at bar 70, rather than the recurrence of
that theme at bar 79, as Kalbeck suggests, a mistake on which Krummacher’s ar-
gument rests. See Petersen, “Über das ‘Triumphlied’ von Johannes Brahms,” Die
Musikforschung 51 (1998): 462–466.
15. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 2:348.
16. Alexander, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs: The
Legend of the Last Roman Emperor,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 2 (1971):
49.
17. Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen Trachtungen,” 639.
18. Ibid.
19. Petersen, “Über das ‘Triumphlied’ von Johannes Brahms.” See also Sabine
Giesbrecht-Schutte, “Gründerzeitliche Festkultur—die ‘Bismarckhymne’ von
Karl Reinthaler und ihre Beziehung zum Triumphlied von Johannes Brahms,”
Die Musikforschung 52 (1999): 70–88.
20. Alings, Die Berliner Siegessäule: Vom Geschichtsbild zum Bild der Geschichte
(Berlin: Parthos Verlag, 2000), 87; translation from Alings, The Column of Vic-
tory in Berlin (Berlin: Bezirksamt Tiergarten von Berlin, 1994), 31.
 Notes to Pages 105–111 225

21. Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen Trachtungen,” 643, citing Spitta,

“Johannes Brahms,” in Zur Musik (Berlin: Gebrüder Paetel, 1892), 413.
22. The title page is reproduced in Kurt Hofmann, ed., Die Erstdrucke der Werke
von Johannes Brahms (Tutzing: Schneider, 1975), 114. Franz Pyllemann, in re-
viewing the Viennese premiere of op. 55, simply states, “The composer drew the
text from the ‘Apocalypse’”; see his “Erste Aufführung von Johannes Brahms’
‘Triumphlied’ in Wien,” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 7 (25 December
1872): 827.
23. Brahms Briefe an P. J. Simrock und Fritz Simrock, vol. 1, ed. Max Kalbeck,
Briefe, vol. 9 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917), 98.
24. Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Karl Reinthaler, ed. Wilhelm Altmann, Briefe, vol.
3 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1908), 30, 32.
25. Contemporaries’ critiques of the Triumphlied are summarized in Angelika
Horstmann, Untersuchungen zur Brahms-Rezeption der Jahre 1860–1880
(Hamburg: Wagner, 1986), 199–206.
26. Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997), 11.
27. William Vaughan writes: “It has that sense of power and control that one associ-
ates with truly heroic art. The maelstrom of panic is held in balance by the cir-
cular design. This superb handling of a dramatic theme makes one wish that
[Cornelius’s] other designs had more action and less exposition in them.”
Vaughan, German Romantic Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980), 221.
28. Grimm, “Berlin und Peter von Cornelius (1859),” in Zehn ausgewählte Essays
zur Einführung in das Studium der Modernen Kunst (Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler,
1871), 277.
29. Grimm, “Die Cartons von Peter von Cornelius,” ibid., 308. Brahms’s copy, pub-
lished as a separate pamphlet, bears the longer title “Die Cartons von Peter
Cornelius in den Sälen der königl. Akademie der Kunste zu Berlin” (Berlin:
Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz, 1859). Brahms owned five separate writings by
Grimm (one in manuscript), all dating from 1854–1863. This roughly reflects
the important connection of Joseph Joachim with Brahms and Grimm. These
same years mark the most intense years of the friendship between Brahms and
Joachim, up to Joseph’s marriage to Amalie in 1864. During the mid-1850s,
Joachim courted Ghisela von Arnim (daughter of Bettina) in Berlin. Grimm had
been a close friend of von Arnim through adolescence and became Joachim’s ri-
val for her affections. Although Joachim lost (Grimm and von Arnim wed in
1859), the three remained close friends for the rest of their lives. I thank Rose
Mauro and Robert Eschbach for drawing my attention to these relationships.
30. Riegel, Cornelius: Der Meister der deutschen Malerei, 2d ed. (Hannover: Carl
Rümpler, 1870), 269.
31. Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to His Music, trans. Mary
Whittall (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), 77, 78.
32. Bekker, Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler (Berlin: Schuster und Löffler,
1918), 18. I return to Bekker’s idea of the symphony as “society forming” in
Chapter 5.
33. Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven, 80.
34. In Schering, Von großen Meistern der Musik (Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang,
1940). Unfortunately (as the date of the essay might suggest), Schering’s
226 Notes to Pages 111–118

thoughts must be treated with circumspection. All too predictably for German
music-historical literature of this time, Schering discerns separate types of
monumentality according to nationalities. And, not surprisingly, he finds Eng-
lish and (especially) German monumentality to be more moral, edifying, and
spiritually rich than their Italian and French counterparts. In the first part of his
essay, however, he manages to discuss musical monumentality in broad histori-
cal terms, and for this, his national bias notwithstanding, Schering’s treatment of
monumentality is quite valuable.
35. At least one early reviewer of the Triumphlied likened its monumental effect to
that of architecture: “[The Triumphlied] so fully makes an impression of the
‘monumental’ that when hearing it one completely forgets to ask by whom or
when it was created, just as it never occurs to the onlooker, when one views an
immense [mächtig] building, to inquire as to the original builder.” Pyllemann,
“Erste Aufführung von Johannes Brahms’ ‘Triumphlied,’ 827–828.
36. Perhaps of relevance is Brahms’s comment when thanking Theodor Billroth for a
gift of a silver goblet, which the latter sent in lieu of attending the premiere of
the Triumphlied at Karlsruhe on 5 June 1872. Brahms wrote, “One cannot
accompany thanks by trumpets and timpani, on the contrary, the warmer they
are, the softer they get.” As translated by Josef Eisinger and Styra Avins in Avins,
Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),
441.
37. Giesbrecht-Schutte, “Gründerzeitliche Festkultur.” She draws her data on “Nun
danket alle Gott” from Adolf Brüssau, Martin Rinckart, 1586–1649, und sein
Lied Nun danket alle Gott, Welt des Gesangbuchs, vol. 10 (Leipzig: Gustav
Schoessmann, 1936).
38. That performance never materialized, nor did any other during 1830. The work
was finally premiered at Berlin in 1832, only to be shelved by Mendelssohn for
the rest of his life. It was published posthumously in 1868.
39. Brinkmann, Late Idyll: The Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms, trans. Peter
Palmer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 220–226. For re-
actions to Brinkmann’s view, see Leon Botstein, “Embracing the Gift of Life,”
Times Literary Supplement 19 (January 1996): 20; Walter Frisch, Brahms: The
Four Symphonies (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996), 64; and David Brodbeck,
Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 68–
70.
40. See Brinkmann, Late Idyll, 126–131, and my own “The Great ‘Warum’? Job,
Christ, and Bach in a Brahms Motet,” Nineteenth-Century Music 19 (1996):
231–251.
41. Krummacher, “Eine meiner politischen Trachtungen,” 651.
42. Brahms went further still, however, and sent an effusive dedication letter to Wil-
helm along with the published score:

Most eminent, most powerful,

most gracious Kaiser and Lord!
The attainments of recent years are so great and glorious, that to one
who was not granted the opportunity to take part in the mighty war for Ger-
many’s greatness there is all the more a heartfelt need to say and to demon-
strate how fortunate he feels to have lived through this great time.
 Notes to Pages 118–127 227

Thoroughly driven by these feelings of thanks and joy, I have tried to

give them expression through the composition of this Triumphlied.
My music is based on text from Revelation, and in order not to overlook
what it celebrates, I cannot suppress the desire to name the special occasion
and purpose of this work, if possible, through the placement of Your Maj-
esty’s name.
Thus I presume most reverently to express the request for permission to
respectfully dedicate the Triumphlied to Your Majesty upon its appearance
in print.
To your Imperial and Royal Majesty
most humbly
Johannes Brahms

Translated from Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 3:351.

43. Nipperdey, “Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19.
jahrhundert,” Historische Zeitschrift 206 (1968): 543.
44. Begun in 1865 to commemorate the Austro-Prussian defeat of Denmark in the
preceding year, the Siegessäule was not completed until 1876, by which time it
had assumed the role of commemorating the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 as
well as the Franco-Prussian War and German unification in 1870–71. Alings,
Berliner Siegessäule, 35–55.
45. Ibid., 90.
46. If anything, the first sixteen beats (the two-beat pickup bar through beat two of
bar 5) sound like four bars in common time. Beyond that point all meter breaks
down until the choirs enter.
47. Some commentators hear this theme as yet another kingly chorale, “Heil dir
im Siegerkranz,” a late-eighteenth-century German adaptation of the English
hymn “God Save the Queen.” Hermann Kretschmar, who penned the only
contemporaneous review of the published score and was the first to note the
similarity among the opening orchestral motive, the choirs’ initial “Hallelujah,”
and the tune of this “universal national anthem” (Allerweltsnationalhymne),
discounted the likelihood that Brahms meant to impart any meaning through
his simple three-note theme. To bolster his doubt, Kretschmar cites Brahms’s
alteration of the hymn’s triple meter into duple here, which would render
the “symbolism intelligible to only the most gifted diviner.” Kretschmar,
“Neue Werke von J. Brahms,” 148n. See also Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms,
2:352–353.
48. One exception might be that the brass are absent for much of the first section of
movement two. But Brahms does not even exploit this feature to create contrast-
ing timbral episodes: the brass are gone for so long and so completely (they enter
only at the più forte arrival at rehearsal E, bar 85), that when they enter it
sounds only as part of the dynamic intensification that began back at bar 73 and
continues through to the fortissimo “Lebhaft” section at bar 95.
49. In describing this passage Karl Geiringer writes, “Shortly before the final climax
a tranquillo passage reveals the gentle and reflective Brahms—one might also
say the true Brahms.” Geiringer, Brahms: His Life and Work, 2d rev. ed. (New
York: Anchor Books, 1961), 288. It is a curious remark since Geiringer’s assess-
ment of the Triumphlied is entirely positive. Even a fan of the work, it seems,
228 Notes to Pages 128–136

finds it necessary to distance its bombastic tone from our image of Brahms, re-
serving that distinction for the few “tranquillo” passages in the piece.
50. On the ending of the Schicksalslied, see John Daverio, “Die Wechsel der Töne in
Brahms’s Schicksalslied,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 46
(1993): 84–113.
51. Kross, Die Chorwerke von Brahms, 63.

5. Gebet Einer König

1. Cited in Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4:487–488.
2. Personal communication. For a more purely musical explanation, see Walter
Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996), 5–
17.
3. Bekker, Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler (Berlin: Schuster and Löffler,
1918).
4. On Germans’ associations between classical humanism and their own nation,
see Tony Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997).
5. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York:
Seabury Press, 1976), 94.
6. Ibid., 160.
7. Carl Dahlhaus developed the idea of the “Second Age of the Symphony” in his
Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 265–276.
8. Frisch, Brahms: The Four Symphonies, 36.
9. The origins of op. 74, no. 1, are discussed in Chapter 2. Most commentators be-
lieve that no. 2 was composed at least as early as 1870 and perhaps earlier. See
Margit L. McCorkle, Brahms Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis
(Munich: Henle, 1985), 314–315.
10. The word Haus can be understood to connote the community of a state if we
consider the division of the Hapsburg Empire into various families or “houses.”
11. Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Franz Wüllner ed. Ernst Wolff, Briefe,
vol. 15 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1921), 158. Wüllner writes:
“Soon I will publish a continuation of my Chorübung, a collection of more-
than-four-voice pieces (five to sixteen), old Italian and old German; but also
modern, i.e., Mendelssohn and Schumann. Do you not have something for
this collection? I am not so bold as to ask you for one or the other of your
new eight-voice pieces.” That collection appeared as part three of Chorübungen
der Münchner Musikschule, Neue Folge, Mustersammlung fünf bis
sechszehnstimmiger Gesänge aus dem sechzehnten, siebzehnten und
achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1893–94). It is unclear
to which of the motets Wüllner is referring when he says “one or the other”
(“eines oder das andere”). If he is referring to entire groups of pieces (presum-
ably unaware that op. 110 contained one single-choir motet), then Wüllner’s re-
quest indicates that very early on, Brahms had discussed the two sets as a pair. If,
however, he is referring to two individual works, he most likely means op. 110,
nos. 1 and 3.
12. Johannes Brahms, Briefe an P. J. und Fritz Simrock, vol. 3 ed. Max Kalbeck,
 Notes to Pages 138–144 229

Briefe, vol. 11 (Berlin: Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917), 219–224; vol. 4

(Briefe, vol. 12), 10, 15–18. The origins of op. 109 and 110 are discussed more
completely by Margit McCorkle in Brahms Werkverzeichnis, 428 and 432, and
by Siegfried Kross in Die Chorwerke von Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Max Hesses
Verlag, 1958), 438–441 and 454–458.
13. Kross, Die Chorwerke, 438–439.
14. For instance, the texts he chose for the three sets of lieder that he published in
1888 (opp. 105–107) are almost all tinged with melancholy or bitter irony.
15. See Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Breitkopf und Härtel, Bartolf Senff,
J. Rieter Biedermann et al., ed. Wilhelm Altmann, Briefe, vol. 14 (Berlin:
Deutsches Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1920), 289. Before 1885, his last documented
interest in Schütz’s works was in May 1878, the year in which the op. 74 motets
were completed. At that time he requested Wüllner’s edition of three polychoral
psalm settings by Schütz (Psalms 6, 130, and 98) from Edmund Astor at the
publisher J. Rieter-Biedermann.
16. These Abschriften are contained on bifolio 23–24 of Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde A 130. Virginia Hancock describes that entire collection and oth-
ers left by Brahms in Brahms’s Choral Compositions and His Library of Early
Music (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 11–68; the Schütz passages
are discussed on pages 30–33. See also Hancock, “Brahms and Early Music:
Evidence from His Library and His Choral Compositions,” in Brahms Studies:
Analytical and Historical Perspectives, ed. George Bozarth (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 40–48; and McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis, 720–
721), listing the specific passages that Brahms copied from the Schütz Werke.
17. Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions, 135–146.
18. Hancock even points out that the declamatory style of the first choir in these
bars closely resembles some of the passages from Schütz’s Psalmen Davids that
Brahms had copied into A 130, leaving no doubt about the psalmodic implica-
tions of the texture (Brahms’s Choral Composition, 144–145).
19. Brahms’s letter to Hans von Bülow is quoted by Kalbeck in Johannes Brahms,
4:184. On possible further evidence of Brahms’s intention for these pieces to
be sung at the festivals mentioned in this letter, see Kurt Hofmann’s essay
“Brahmsiana der Familie Petersen. Erinnerungen und Briefe,” in Brahms Studien,
vol. 3, ed. Kurt and Renate Hofmann (Hamburg: Johannes Brahms-Gesellschaft,
1979), 71–72. The most thorough discussion of Fest- und Gedenksprüche’s oc-
casional purpose comes from Ryan Mark Minor, “National Memory, Public
Music: Commemoration and Consecration in Nineteenth Century Choral
Works” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004).
20. The development of völkisch ideology throughout the nineteenth century is
covered at length in George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellec-
tual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset’s Universal Library, 1964).
As the title of his book suggests, Mosse is ultimately concerned with the mod-
ern implications of nineteenth-century political and ideological developments.
Nevertheless, chaps. 1 and 2 (“From Romanticism to the Volk” and “A Ger-
manic Faith”) offer thorough accounts and thoughtful interpretations of
völkisch trends in the nineteenth century.
21. For exhaustive essays on the complex history of the terms Reich, Staat, Nation,
230 Notes to Pages 144–147

and Volk, see the entries under those words in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe:
Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto
Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984).
In particular see the entry under Reich, pts. 5–6 (6:487–505). For a considerably
condensed discussion of these terms, see Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five
Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 364.
22. Greenfeld outlines the Pietists’ influence on Romanticism and German national-
ism in Nationalism, 314–322. Her work updates Koppel S. Pinson’s extensive
discussion of this topic in Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1934).
23. Lagarde develops these ideas throughout his Schriften für das deutschen Volk
(Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937). His ideas on nationalism and religion
are covered at length by Fritz Stern in The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1961). See also Mosse, German Ideology, 31–39;
William John Bossenbrook, The German Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1961), 346–349; and Wolfgang Tilgner, “Volk, Nation und Vaterland
im protestantischen Denken zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus (ca.
1870–1933),” in Volk-Nation-Vaterland, ed. Horst Zilleßen (Gütersloh: Gerd
Mohn, 1970), 146–149.
24. The same cannot be said for the annotations in his 1833 Luther Bible, where
Brahms marked no passages (other than Wisdom of Solomon 9) that touch on
this theme. One might take this for evidence of a chronological separation be-
tween his Bible markings and his entry of the texts on folios 15–19 of his note-
book.
25. Both Isaac and the word of God make the passing of the covenant explicit earlier
in that chapter. Genesis 28:3–4 [Isaac]: “May God almighty bless you and make
you fruitful and numerous, that you may become a company of peoples. May he
give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you”;
Genesis 28:12–13: “And he [Jacob] dreamed that there was a ladder set up on
the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the Angels of God were ascending
and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord,
the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie
I will give to you and to your offspring.’”
26. Bossenbrook, The German Mind, 343. For a more thorough discussion of
Treitschke and Sybel and other historians at this time, see George G. Iggers, The
German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought
from Herder to the Present, rev. ed. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1983), 116–120. See also Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 5:498–504.
27. As listed in Kurt Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms: Bücher
und Musikalienverzeichnis, Schriftenreihe zur Musik (Hamburg: Dieter Wagner,
1974), 117.
28. Quoted in Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4:376.
29. There are several in-depth studies of German national festivals in the nineteenth
century, including Dieter Dülding, Peter Friedmann, and Paul Münsch, eds.,
Öffentliche Festkultur: Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis
zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlts, 1988); George L.
Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Move-
 Notes to Pages 147–151 231

ments in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1975); Fritz Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutsch-
land von 1871 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990); and Theodore
Schieder, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als Nationalstaat, Wissenschaftliche
Abhandlungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordhein-
Westfalen, vol. 20 (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1961), 71–87.
30. Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses, 73–76.
31. Ibid., 132–133.
32. Ryan Minor interprets Brahms’s remark in the opposite manner; the composer,
Minor argues, did not wish the works to be limited to the three holidays in ques-
tion, but rather hoped they could be performed more frequently for a wider vari-
ety of festivals. See Minor, “National Memory, Public Music.”
33. The program is reproduced by Fritz Schellack in “Sedan- und Kaisergeburtstagfeste,”
in Dülding, Friedmann, and Münsch, Öffentliche Festkultur, 283.
34. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 3:400.
35. Although these pieces were not published until 1867, they were probably com-
posed five or more years earlier. See McCorkle, Brahms Werkverzeichnis, 148.
36. See Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses, 137.
37. A note entered by a chorister in one of the part books of the Hamburg Frauenchor
claiming that the S S A A version Brahms arranged for that group in 1860 was
“originally written for four men’s voices” led Sophie Drinker to surmise that
Brahms set the T T B B version as far back as the summer of 1847, when he
assembled a men’s chorus in the town of Winsen. See Drinker, Brahms and His
Women Choruses (Merion, Pa.: Masurgia Publishers, 1952), 95; Kalbeck,
Johannes Brahms, 1:47; and Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions, 115–
116. The idea that this setting originated in Brahms’s youth gains credence
through the unusually austere imitation of “early” music displayed here. Not
only do the voices move in absolutely like rhythms up until the final extended
cadence of each strophe in bars 32–36, but also the song is set entirely in root-
position harmonies. Missing are the trademark intricacies of rhythm and voice-
leading that normally mark Brahms’s emulation of German styles from the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Although the utter simplicity of “Ich schwing
mein Horn” might be understood as a character piece that carries parameters of
rhythm and harmony to extremes in order to evoke a Gothic aura, it is also pos-
sible that this setting predates the intense study of earlier musical styles that
Brahms undertook in the 1850s.
38. Kross argues that the scarcity of Männerchor works in Brahms’s oeuvre was due
to the lack of situations Brahms encountered that would have called for such
pieces—as compared with the large number of works he composed for women’s
chorus—and to Brahms’s possible distaste for the lower culture for which the
men’s chorus movement was partially responsible in the nineteenth century (Die
Chorwerke, 149).
39. Hugo Riemann, writing in 1882, says, “More recently the term hymn designates
vocal works of various forms, mostly, however, referring to works with grand
effect, for large choir with brass accompaniment, on sacred as well as secular
subjects.” Musik-Lexikon von Dr. Hugo Riemann (Leipzig: Verlag des Biblio-
graphischen Instituts, 1882), 409–410.
232 Notes to Pages 152–167

40. Hans Michael Beuerle makes an especially thorough comparison of the piece’s
two ends. See Beuerle, Johannes Brahms: Untersuchungen zu den A-cappella-
Kompositionen (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1971), 210–211.
41. Even the basses become unstuck at the word “anrufen” (bars 31–32), misplac-
ing their accent on the second syllable as the other six voices do.
42. When Wüllner—whose advice Brahms solicited in conjunction with opp. 109
and 110—objected to this detail, Brahms refused to waver. Brahms writes: “For
every NB I am thankful to you—even when it wasn’t useable! I cannot give you
få–F natural, for example in no. 2” (Briefwechsel mit Franz Wüllner, 164). Of
course, had he altered anything, it would have been to change the F-sharp to an
F natural and thus make all of bar 21 a D minor harmony.
43. Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions, 150–151.
44. The only dynamic marking other than forte in the opus before the middle sec-
tion of no. 3 is the piano in bars 36–40 of no. 2, which occurs at the pictorial set-
ting of the words “das wird wüßte.”
45. Bernhard W. Anderson, “Deuteronomy,” in the New Oxford Annotated Bible,
ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 217 OT (Old Testament). Robert Polzin has explored this aspect of
Deuteronomy more deeply by analyzing the literary relationship between Moses
and the “Deuteronomist.” Polzin, “Deuteronomy,” in The Literary Guide to the
Bible, ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1987), 92–94.
46. See my “Brahms on Schopenhauer: The Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, and Late-
Nineteenth-Century Pessimism,” in Brahms Studies vol. 1, ed. David Brodbeck
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 170–188.

6. Beyond the End

1. Brahms wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock on 7 June 1889: “I am giving the
three choruses [op. 109] as one work, but I am not sure about the title. . . .
The title will be something like: ‘German Festival and Commemorative Sayings
[Deutsche Fest- und Gedenksprüche],’ and I am tempted, in case you should
suggest it, to give a second title for other countries (Switzerland, England): ‘Na-
tional’ etc. Will that work?” Johannes Brahms, Briefe an P. J. Simrock und Fritz
Simrock, vol. 3, 3d ed., ed. Max Kalbeck Briefe, vol. 11 (Berlin: Deutsche
Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1917), 219.
2. Kross, Die Chorwerke von Johannes Brahms (Berlin: Max Hesses Verlag, 1958),
434.
3. Ibid., 3.
4. Kross, “The Choral Music of Johannes Brahms,” American Choral Review (spe-
cial issue) 25 (1994): 5. Kross’s later remarks begin to explain why Brahms’s mu-
sic, though still quite prevalent during the Third Reich, was not put to as much
public use as it might have been: he was never a favorite with the farthest right
wing in German politics.
5. Karl Laux, Der Einsame: Johannes Brahms Leben und Werk (Graz: Verlag
Anton Pustet, 1944), 341–342. See also Alfred von Ehrmann, Johannes Brahms:
Weg, Werk und Welt (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1933), 417–418.
 Notes to Pages 167–173 233

6. Brahms, Briefe an Fritz Simrock, vol. 4, ed. Max Kalbeck, Briefe, vol. 12 (Berlin:
Deutsche Brahms-Gesellschaft, 1919), 30.
7. As quoted in Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 4:247, n. 2.
8. On the possible inclusion of earlier material in the late Intermezzi, see ibid., 277.
9. A Wst Ia 79.564, fol. 7r. See George Bozarth, “Brahms’s Lieder Inventory of
1859–60 and Other Documents of His Life and Work,” Fontes Artis Musicae 30
(1983): 111. (Bozarth incorrectly cites the folio on which Brahms copied the
texts as 7 verso.) See also Dillon Parmer’s interpretation in “Brahms and the Po-
etic Motto: A Hermeneutical Aid?” Journal of Musicology 15 (1997): 367–379.
10. In fact, the three-note motive is developed immediately in the supporting voices
at bar 5: A–F–G on top against C–A–Bã in the “tenor” (upper left hand).
11. Rudolf von der Leyen, Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund (Düsseldorf:
Karl Robert Langeweische, 1905), 82–83.
12. The book appears as volume 8 of Herder’s Sämmtliche Werke. Zur schönen
Literatur und Kunst, 20 parts published in 9 instead of 10 vols. (Stuttgart: J. G.
Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1827–1830). According to Kurt Hofmann’s index
of Brahms’s library, “On the end paper [Vorsatz] of the third part the owner-
ship notice ‘J. Brahms 1856.’” Hofmann, Die Bibliothek von Johannes Brahms:
Bücher- und Musikalienverzeichnis (Hamburg: Verlag Karl Dieter Wagner,
1974), 51.
13. Clara Schumann–Johannes Brahms: Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, vol. 2,
ed. Berthold Litzmann (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1927), 562, cited in
Malcolm MacDonald, Brahms (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 292.
14. Leon Botstein suggests that op. 122 may be “based on material [Brahms]
worked on at several points in his life before 1896.” Botstein, ed., The Compleat
Brahms (New York: Norton, 1999), 205. There is, however, no indication that
any of these chorale preludes were composed before June 1896. See George
Bozarth’s preface to his ur-text edition of op. 122, Johannes Brahms, Werke für
Orgel, ed. George Bozarth (Munich: Henle, 1987), vi–vii.
15. See G. W. F. Hegel, “Two Fragments on Love,” trans. H. S. Harris and Cyrus
Hamlin, Clio 8 (1987): 261–262; and Dieter Henrich, “Hegel and Hölderlin,”
Idealistic Studies 2 (1972): 151–173. See also my “Brahms on Schopenhauer:
The Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Pessimism,” in
Brahms Studies, vol. 1, ed. David Brodbeck (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1994), 174–177.
16. Walter Niemann, Brahms (1920), trans. Catherine Alison Phillips (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), 212.
17. Ibid., 241.
18. Karl Geiringer’s formulation is typical: “A gentle tranquility, combined with
a certain unworldliness, increasingly took possession of the aging man; even
when the circle around him grew smaller, as death robbed him of some of his
nearest friends, this mood was essentially unshaken.” Geiringer, Brahms: His
Life and Work, trans. H. B. Weiner and Bernard Miall (Boston: Houghton Mif-
flin, 1936), 167.
19. Morgan, “Six Piano Pieces, Opus 118,” in Botstein, The Compleat Brahms
194–195.
20. Niemann, Brahms (Berlin: Schuster and Loeffler, 1920).
234 Notes to Pages 173–177

21. Ibid., v, citing Leyen, Johannes Brahms als Mensch und Freund, 98–99.
22. Wilfferodt, “Zum zehn jährigen Todestage von Johannes Brahms,”
Musikalisches Wochenblatt / Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 28, no. 13/14 (1907):
314. Also, Walter Frisch has discussed how both Bach and Brahms were posited
as healing agents; see his “Bach, Brahms, and the Emergence of Musical Mod-
ernism,” in Bach Perspectives, vol. 3, Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart
to Hindemith, ed. Michael Marissen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1998), 109–131.
23. Niemann, Brahms, 445.
24. Fritz Stern, in his seminal study of German nationalist ideology, The Politics
of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1961), outlines the centrality of Niederdeutschland
in the work of one such writer, Julius Langbehn, whose book Rembrandt als
Erzieher, von einem Deutschen (Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld, 1890) enjoyed im-
mense popularity in the 1890s and again in the 1920s (120, 147). Langbehn
wrote of Niederdeutschland as the repository of true German Volkstümlichkeit,
as opposed to Prussian culture, which had been racially compromised through
intermingling with Jews, Slavs, and Frenchmen.
25. Niemann, Die Musik der Gegenwart und der Letzten Vergangenheit bis zu den
Romantikern, Klassizisten und Neudeutschen, 9th–12th eds. (Berlin: Schuster
and Loeffler, 1920).
26. Ibid., 32.
27. A “racial” fingerprint is so pronounced in Brahms’s style, says Niemann, that
one can distinguish his music from that of his “prophet,” Robert Schumann:
“Brahms’s character differentiation from Schumann is easiest to grasp from a
racial standpoint. As a Niederdeutscher, Brahms took on Schumann’s heavy,
serious, melancholy side, that doom [Verhängnis] which slumbered deep within
his inner self. That which was Saxon in the charming disposition of Schumann,
the smoothly folklike, naïve, and happy character of his sunniest themes,
showed itself from the beginning in blooming lyricism. The middle-class charac-
ter of German Romantic art was also not lacking, finally, . . . in Brahms. As one
of a harsh, manly, and Beethovenian nature, however, he favored serious epic
pathos. So in general the woman supported Schumann, the man supported
Brahms.” Niemann, Die Musik der Gegenwart, 43.
28. Ibid., 275.
29. Ibid., 277.
30. Ibid., 289.
31. Ibid., 295–296. Niemann had lodged similar complaints about the Americaniza-
tion, mercantilization, and industrialization of music elsewhere in the book.
32. One can see the two stereotypes butt heads in Niemann’s discussion of Gustav
Mahler, whose “brilliant, decorative, and fresco-like effect” Niemann attributes
to the “characteristic tendency of an Austrian who grew up in a healthy artistic
sensuality,” but whose “coarsest deficiencies . . . rest in the monstrous extrava-
gance of the elementary sound phenomena of a Simon Mayr, a Meyerbeer, and
Berlioz.” And, Niemann adds, these speak to “his often outrageous, strongly
marked Semitic race.” Niemann, Musik der Gegenwart, 147–148. Yet, when his
complete statement on Mahler is considered, it is clear that Niemann does not
 Notes to Pages 178–181 235

perceive his own racial stereotyping to be anti-Semitic. He closes by chiding the

“blind and foolish Jew hatred of [Mahler’s] opponents” (149).
33. Willibald Nagel, Johannes Brahms (Stuttgart: J. Eingelhorns Nach f[olger].,
1923), 10–11.
34. Arndt, “Exkurs: Das Gerücht über Brahms’ jüdische Abstammung,” in Das
“Reichs-Brahmsfest” 1933 in Hamburg: Rekonstruktion und Dokumentation,
ed. Arbeitsgruppe Exilmusik am Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut der Universität
Hamburg (Hamburg: Bockel Verlag, 1997), 119–120.
35. P. Walter Jacob, Musica Prohibida/Verbotene Musik: Ein Vortrag im Exil, ed.
with commentary by Fritz Pohle (Hamburg: Hamburger Arbeitsstelle für deut-
sche Exilliteratur, 1991), 14. For his part, Jacob never locates the tainted
Brahmsfest in question. Rather, it is Pohle who draws this connection in an edi-
tor’s note (54, n. 81).
36. Motzkin, Das Schwarzbuch: Tatsachen und Dokumente: Die Lage der Juden in
Deutschland 1933 (Paris: Comité des Délégations Juives, 1934), 14. Motzkin
offers this comment as a footnote to a reprint of an interview with the Prussian
culture minister Hans Hinkel in the Frankfurter Zeitung of 6 April 1933. Like
Jacob, Motzkin does not specify where the canceled festival was to have taken
place.
37. Fuller-Maitland, “Brahms,” in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians 3d
ed., vol. 1, ed. Fuller-Maitland (London: Macmillan, 1921), 444.
38. Sessions, “Music and Nationalism: Some Notes on Dr. Göbbel’s Letter to
Furtwängler,” Modern Music 11 (1933): 4.
39. Margaret Notley, “Brahms as Liberal: Genre, Style, and Politics in Late-Nine-
teenth-Century Vienna,” Nineteenth-Century Music 17 (1993): 107–123. See
also Leon Botstein, “Brahms and Nineteenth-Century Painting,” Nineteenth-
Century Music 14 (1990): 154–168.
40. Stolzing, Ostdeutsche Rundschau, 19 October 1890, cited in Notley, “Brahms
as Liberal,” 122. Notley does not provide a title or page number for Stolzing’s
remark.
41. Spitzer, Lezte Wiener Spaziergänge (Vienna, 1894), 266–267; quoted in Kalbeck,
Brahms, 4:175–176.
42. Kalbeck, Brahms, 4:438–439.
43. Albert Heintze, Die Deutschen Familiennamen: geschichtlich, geographisch,
sprachlich, 4th improved and enlarged ed., ed. P[aul] Cascorbi (Halle:
Buchhandlung des Waisenshauses, 1914), 7.
44. Bahlow, Deutsches Namenbuch: Ein Führer durch Deutschlands Familiennamen
(Neumeister in Holstein: Wachholtz, 1933), 57. The first entry under part “1b:
Familiennamen aus Kirchlichen Taufnamen,” reads: “Abraham. Biblisch / jud.
Abraham; Abram (ursprüngl. Form). Abrahamso(h)n. / Obromeit (littauisch).
Aberle (jüd in Mannheim). / Slaw. Abresch, Abrusch. / ostfried. Abrahams;
Abrams. Brahms (vgl. Zunz S. 53).” The Zunz reference is to Ludwig Zunz,
“Namen der Juden (1836, Dezember),” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, ed. Cu-
rators of the Zunz Foundation (Berlin: Louis Gerschel, 1876), 53. Zunz lists
“Brahim” as a Jewish first name.
45. Kessler, Die Familiennamen der Juden in Deutschland (Leipzig: Zentralstelle für
Deutsche Personen- und Familiengeschichte, 1935), 17: “The Reformation bat-
236 Notes to Pages 181–184

tled with ardent zeal against medieval saint worship, and the storm against
Catholic relics and images in the churches was followed by efforts to root out
saints’ names from families. From the second half of the sixteenth century, one
began to introduce Old Testament names as substitutes for the saints’ names
among the Protestant population. . . . To this Protestant group and time belong
also Christian German family names like Abraham (Brahms).”
46. Krause, Die Jüdische Namenwelt (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1942), 33;
151n24.
47. Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms, 1:1–13.
48. Franz Brenner, “Über die aus Tondern stammenden Ahnen des Komponisten
Johannes Brahms,” Die Heimat (Kiel) 39 (1929): 275, 279.
49. Erwin Freitag, “Beitrag zur Geschichte der Familie Brahms,” Ditmarschen (Kiel)
8 (1932): 80–81. The anonymous author of an article in Hamburger
Fremdenblatt of 25 May 1933 (in connection with the Hamburg “Reichs-
Brahmsfest”) titled “Johannes Brahms’ Vaterhaus” may have been directly echo-
ing Freitag in stating: “Family names such as Braahmstädt, Brahmste, Brahmst,
or Brahms are quite common in northwest Germany. Other meanings are ab-
surd.” The article is cited by Arndt, “Das Gerücht über Brahms,” 119.
50. Signale der Musikalische Welt 96 (1938): 26.
51. The events surrounding the Vienna Brahms-Fest are recounted in Fred K. Prieberg,
Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Third Reich, trans. Christopher
Dolan (London: Quartet Books, 1991), 64–66; and in Albrecht Dümling, ed.,
Verteidigung des Musikalischen Fortschritts: Brahms und Schoenberg (Ham-
burg: Argument Verlag, 1990), 45–49.
52. Printed as “Johannes Brahms: 1931,” in Furtwängler, Ton und Wort: Aufsätze
und Vorträge, 1918 bis 1954, 6th ed. (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1955), 40–52.
The date 1931 is apparently an error, or it may refer to some earlier, unrecorded
venue for the same speech.
53. In a letter from Berg to his wife, 17 May 1933, quoted in Dümling, Verteidigung
des Musikalischen Fortschritts, 56.
54. As Michael Kater points out, Furtwängler also aided “anti-Semites, Nazis, and
musicians sympathetic with the Nazi cause,” and concludes that “this much
meddling, whether for a positive or a negative purpose, suggests that
Furtwängler was not an altruist but a man obsessed with personal connections,
who always had to be at the center of things.” Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musi-
cians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 196. Kater’s approach to Furtwängler might best be described as a sym-
pathetic thrashing. Prieberg’s account in Trial of Strength is far more apologetic.
55. Furtwängler, Notebooks, 1924–54, trans. Shaun Whiteside, ed. Michael Tanner
(London: Quartet Books, 1989), 161. This is only one of many such remarks in
Furtwängler’s notebooks, particularly from 1945 (155–163).
56. See Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Mod-
ernist Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 3–10.
57. Furtwängler, “Brahms: 1931,” 48.
58. Ibid., 51–52.
59. Ibid., 51. For an account of the Nazi Bruckner program, see Benjamin Marcus
Korstvedt, “Anton Bruckner in the Third Reich and After (An Essay on Ideology
 Notes to Pages 185–191 237

and Bruckner Reception),” Musical Quarterly 80 (1996): 132–160. See also

Korstvedt’s “‘Return to the Pure Sources’: The Ideology and Text-Critical Leg-
acy of the First Bruckner Gesamtausgabe,” in Bruckner Studies, ed. Timothy L.
Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
91–109.
60. Furtwängler, “Brahms: 1931,” 51.
61. On Mahler’s encounters with anti-Semitism and antimodernism in Vienna, see
Karen Painter, “The Sensuality of Timbre: Responses to Mahler and Modernity
at the Fin de Siècle,” and K. M. Knittle, “‘Ein hypermoderner Dirigent’: Mahler
and Anti-Semitism in Fin de Siècle Vienna,” Nineteenth-Century Music 18
(1995): 236–256 and 257–276.
62. On this point, see Richard Taruskin, “Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideol-
ogy,” Nineteenth-Century Music 16 (1993): 286–302; and idem, “The Darker
Side of Modern Music,” New Republic 5 (1988): 28–34.
63. Furtwängler, “Brahms: 1931,” 52.
64. Furtwängler, “Brahms und die Krise unserer Zeit: 1934,” in Ton und Wort:
Aufsätze und Vorträge, 1918 bis 1954, 6th ed. (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1955),
86–90.
65. Ibid., 86.
66. Ibid., 90.
67. Richard Taruskin has tackled the question of “Teutonic universalism” head-on
in his introduction to Repercussions 5 (1996): 5–20.
68. On Bekker’s career, see Christopher Hailey, “The Paul Bekker Collection in the
Yale University Music Library,” Notes 51 (1994): 13–21. Michael Kater men-
tions Bekker’s religion in relation to Hans Pfitzner’s anti-Semitic slurs against the
critic in The Twisted Muse, 213.
69. Bekker, “Brahms,” Anbruch 15, no. 4/5 (April–May 1933): 56, 57–58.
70. Schoenberg, “Brahms the Progressive,” in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of
Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1975), 399–409.
71. Schoenberg, “National Music (1),” ibid., 169.
72. Schoenberg, “National Music (2),” ibid., 173.
73. Geiringer, Johannes Brahms, Leben und Schaffen eines deutschen Meisters (Vi-
enna: Adolf M. Roher, 1934); in English, Brahms: His Life and Work, trans.
Weiner and Miall (see note 18).
74. Geiringer, Johannes Brahms, 306–307. By 1955 Geiringer himself, while moved
to adopt the English title in his second German edition, let the quoted passage
stand in full. Geiringer, Johannes Brahms, Sein Leben und Schaffen, 2d enlarged
and improved ed. (Zurich, 1955); pocket edition (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974),
359.
75. Walter Rehberg and Paula Rehberg, Johannes Brahms, sein Leben und Werk
(Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1947), 394–395.
76. Ibid., 395–396.
77. Ibid., 397.
78. Ibid., 398.
79. Brahms scholarship that focuses on allusion includes the Bozarth and Parmer es-
says mentioned in note 9, as well as David Brodbeck, “Brahms, the Third Sym-
238 Notes to Page 192

phony, and the New German School,” in Brahms and His World, ed. Walter
Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 65–80; idem, Brahms:
Symphony No. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Kenneth
Hull, “Brahms the Allusive: Extracompositional Reference in the Instrumental
Music of Johannes Brahms” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1989); and Ray-
mond Knapp, Brahms and the Challenge of the Symphony (Stuyvesant, N.Y.:
Pendragon Press, 1997).
80. The politician was Klaus Landowsky, head of the Christian Democratic Union
in the Berlin Senate.
81. Barenboim, “Germans, Jews, and Music,” New York Review of Books 48 (29
March 2001): 50–51.
 Index

Abell, Arthur M., 39, 215n23 Bible, 2, 4, 10, 37–41, 65, 75, 77–78, 96, 97,
Abrams, M. H., 78–79, 96 117, 145–147, 163; Brahms’s baptismal
Absolute music, 186, 188, 190–193 Bible, 35, 37, 47–53, 55, 60, 89; specific
Adorno, Theodor, 134 passages: Wisdom 9, 48–50, 59–63, 65;
Alexander, Paul J., 104 Job 3:20–23, 52–53, 55; 1 Kings 8, 59–60;
Alings, Reinhard, 104, 135 1 Kings 6:11–12, 60–63; Psalm 51, 52;
Allgeyer, Julius, 76 Psalm 126:5–6, 50, 68; 1 Corinthians 13,
Anderson, Benedict, 217n45 62, 64; Revelation 6, 99–101; Revelation
Anti-Semitism, 176–177, 179–180, 181, 185 19, 102–103, 105. See also Brahms, note-
Apocalypse, 77–80, 126, 144; and French book of biblical texts
Revolution, 78. See also Brahms, Works, Billroth, Theodor, 45, 136, 172, 226n36
Ein deutsches Requiem; Brahms, Works, Bismarck, Otto von, 4, 76, 98–99, 133, 137,
Triumphlied 146
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 24, 43–44; “Des Botstein, Leon, 6, 29
deutschen Vaterland,” 43; Meine Bozarth, George, 23
Wanderungen und Wandelungen, 43–44 Brahms, Johannes: Vienna monument to, 1–
Arndt, Peri, 179, 180, 182 3; as liberal, 4, 6, 102, 146, 187, 191; pa-
Arnim, Achim von and Clemens Brentano, triotism, 4, 98, 102, 104, 118, 132, 133,
Das Knaben Wunderhorn, 15 137, 143–151, 163–164; “Erklärung”
Austro-Prussian War, 76–77 [Declaration] against New German
School, 10; and folksong, 12–18; study of
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 9, 99, 102, 114, 135 early music, 24, 69, 139–140, 162; collec-
Bahlow, Hans, 181 tion of Deutsche Sprichworte, 33; religious
Barbarossa, Friedrich, 104 attitudes, 24–25, 31, 33–37, 41–43, 64,
Barenboim, Daniel, 192 76–78, 90, 144–145, 147, 164, 171; note-
Beckerath, Laura von, 146–147, 148 book of biblical texts, 35, 48–50, 53–63,
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1, 8–9, 98–99, 110, 66–67, 137–139, 143, 145; apartment at
134, 175, 186, 187; Symphony no. 5 in C Karlgasse 4, Vienna, 98–101; possible Jew-
minor, op. 67, 91, 92; Symphony no. 9 in ish origins of name, 178–182; as godfa-
D minor, op. 125, 9, 114–116, 127 ther, 214n8
Beiser, Frederick C., 32 Works:
Bekker, Paul, 110, 111, 134–135, 187, 191 “Abenddämmerung,” op. 49, no. 5, 29
Bellman, Jonathan, 26–27 “Ach lieber Herre Jesu Christ,” WoO 34,
Berg, Alban, 183 no. 6, 16, 149
Beuerle, Hans Michael, 156 Agnus Dei, WoO 18, 52–53
240 Index

Brahms (continued) rale “Nun danket alle Gott” in, 111–

Alto Rhapsody, op. 53, 105, 128, 149 118
Ave Maria, op. 12, 15 Twelve Lieder and Romances for Women’s
“Die Nonne und der Ritter,” op. 28, no. 1, Chorus, op. 44, 149
213n43 Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Han-
Ein deutsches Requiem, op 45, 1–2, 34, del, op. 24, 5
40–43, 50, 65–98, 106, 119, 131, 135, “Vergangen ist mir Glück und Heil,”
165; German Language in, 43, 46, 77, op. 48, no. 6, 29
78, 90, 94, 97; “Trost” (comfort), as a “Verstohlen geht der Mond auf,” WoO
theme, 57, 65–70, 73, 75, 80; temporal- 33, no. 49, 170
ity in, 68–70, 73, 75, 79–81, 93, 96–97; Vier ernste Gesänge, op. 121, 34, 36, 61,
apocalypticism in, 84–97, 126–127, 63–64, 66, 164, 171–172
128–129; text autograph, 220n5 “Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem
Eleven Chorale Preludes, op. 122, 171 Mühseligen?”, op. 74, no. 1, 38, 51–56,
Fest- und Gedenksprüche, op. 109, 38, 66, 116, 135, 138
57–58, 63, 77–78, 118, 135–167; “Wiegenlied,” op. 49, no. 4, 15–16, 29,
polychoral techniques in, 135–136, 168
139–143, 151–153, 157–159; prayer- Brahms, Christiane (mother), 33, 65, 72,
fulness in, 137–139, 144, 151–156, 75
161–162 Brahms, Elise (sister), 172
Five songs for Men’s Chorus, op. 41, 149– Brahms, Peter Hinrich (great-grandfather),
151 181
“Geistliches Wiegenlied,” op. 91, no. 2, Brahms-Wagner dichotomy. See Wagner,
18–30 Richard
Gesang der Parzen, op. 89, 34–35, 128, Brendel, (Karl) Franz, 9–10
131 Brinkmann, Reinhold, 116, 134
“Gestillte Sehnsucht,” op. 91, no. 1, 28 Büchner, Gottfried, Real- und verbal-Bibel-
“Herbstgefühl,” op. 48, no. 7, 29 concordance, 35–36
Intermezzo in E-flat major, op. 117, no. 1, Bülow, Hans von, 136, 143, 147, 172
168–170 Burckhardt, Jakob, 108
Marienlieder, op. 22, 12–15
“O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf,” Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 44
op. 74, no. 2, 135 Cascorbi, Paul, 181–182
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, op. 15, Cherubini, Luigi, 98–99
65 Chorale, 114–116. See also “Ein feste Burg
Piano Sonata in C major, op. 1, 170 ist unser Gott”; Haydn, “Gott erhalte
Rinaldo, op. 50, 27, 149 unsern Kaiser”; “Nun danket alle Gott”;
Romances on Tieck’s Magelone, op. 33, “Nur wer den lieben Gott läßt walten”
27 Christianity, 36–37, 41–42; and romanti-
“Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein rein Herz” cism, 8, 9, 11–17, 22, 24, 31–33, 41, 64,
op. 29, no. 2, 52 171–172; and German nationalism, 144–
Schicksalslied, op. 54, 106, 128, 131 145
Six Piano Pieces, op. 118, 172–173 Cornelius, Peter (painter), 108–110; Die
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68, 91, Apokalyptischen Reiter, 99–101, 119, 126,
115–116, 134 129
Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 73, 134 Corner, David Gregor, Groß-Catolischem
Thirteen Canons for Women’s Voices, Gesangbuch, 22–24
op. 113, 170–171
Three Motets, op. 110, 135–143, 167; Dahlhaus, Carl, 110
“Ich aber bin elend,” no. 1, 54–56 Daverio, John, 40
Triumphlied, op. 55, 1–2, 63, 76, 94, Davies, Tony, 108
101–108, 111–133, 143, 144; Dessoff, Otto, 38
monumentality in, 101, 105, 108, anti- Drei-Kaiser-Jahr, 63, 137, 146, 148
French sentiment in, 102–105; Drinker, Sophie, 231n37
apocalypticism in, 105, 126–127; cho- Dvoéák, Anton, 31
 Index 241

Eichendorff, Johann, 24 Herzogenberg, Heinrich von, 34, 209n6

“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (chorale), 114 Heuberger, Richard, 38–39
Encke, Fedor, 180 Hindemith, Paul, 184
Hitler, Adolf, 102, 165–166
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 24; Reden an die Hobsbawm, Eric J., 11, 210n13
deutsche Nation, 44 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 79, 92, 168
Folk. See Volk Hofmann, Kurt, 47
Franco-Prussian War, 2, 77–78, 101, 105, Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich, 10,
117, 126, 151 35, 78, 128, 171
Freitag, Erwin, 181–182 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 109
French Revolution, 78, 147. See also Ro-
manticism Jacob, Paul Walter, 179, 182
Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, 108– Joachim, Amalie, 22, 25
109 Joachim, Josef, 22, 25, 34, 45
Frisch, Walter, 135, 234n22 Jochmann, Carl Gustav, 44
Fuller-Maitland, John Alexander, 179 “Josef, lieber Josef mein” (hymn), 19, 21–23,
Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 18, 179, 182–187, 25–30
191–192
Kalbeck, Max, 23, 41–42, 63, 102–104,
Gabrieli, Giovanni, 162 117, 133, 137, 143, 147, 148, 181
Gay, Peter, 6 Kater, Michael, 236n54
Geibel, Emanuel, 19, 22–23, 25, 29 Kermode, Frank, 78, 79, 97
Geiringer, Karl, 189–190 Kessler, Gerhard, 181
Gellner, Ernest, 12, 46, 214n3 Keyserlingk, Botho Graf von, 182
Gerber, Rudolf, 41 Kleist, Heinrich von, 24
German language, 7–8, 43–46; the Volk and, Klemperer, Otto, 182
43–45; Wilhelm Scherer and, 45–46. See Krause, Konrad, 181
also Grimm, Jacob Kretschmar, Hermann, 101, 227n47
Giesbrecht-Schutte, Sabine, 104, 114 Kretzschmer, August and Wilhelm Florentin
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 10, 35, 40 von Zuccalmaglio, Deutsche Volkslieder
Greenfeld, Leah, 4, 7 mit Ihren Original-Weisen, 23
Grimm, Hermann, 109–110 Kross, Siegfried, 132, 138, 165–167, 224n11
Grimm, Jacob, 35; on German language, 45 Krummacher, Friedhelm, 102–105, 116

Häfner, Klaus, 224n11 Lagarde, Paul de, 145–146, 147, 162

Hamburg Reichs-Brahmsfest (1933), 179, Langbehn, Julius, 234n24
182, 236n49 Laux, Karl, 166
Hancock, Virginia, 139, 156, 161 Lemcke, Carl, 149–150
Handel, George Frideric, 9, 101–102, 183; Levi, Hermann, 106, 126
Dettingen Te Deum, 102; Messiah, 106, Leyen, Rudolf von der, 38–40, 170, 173–174
148 Liszt, Franz, 9, 12, 42, 178
Hanslick, Eduard, 5 Lope de Vega, Garcia, 19, 22–23, 29
Hassler, Hans Leo, 24 Luther, Martin, 45–46, 114–115
Hastings, Adrian, 7–8
Haydn, Franz Josef, “Gott erhalte unsern MacDonald, Malcolm, 65
Kaiser,” 77 Mahler, Gustav, 184–185, 234n32
Hebbel, Christian Friedrich, 175 Mandyczewski, Eusebius, 167
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 171 Mann, Thomas, Doktor Faustus, 116
Heintze, Albert, Die deutschen Marx, Adolf Bernhard, 8
Familiennamen, 180–182 Meister, Karl Severin, Das Katholische
Helst, Barthel van der, Friedensschluß zu Kirchenlied, 22–23
Münster, 99 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 40, 175; Sym-
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 168, 170, 175 phony no. 5 in D (“Reformation”), 8, 82,
Hernried, Robert, 41 114–115
Herzogenberg, Elisabet von, 34, 172 Men’s choruses, 149–151, 152–153
242 Index

Miall, Bernard, 189–190 “Resonet in Laudibus” (hymn), 19, 22, 29

Miller zu Aichholz, Viktor von, Brahms- Reynolds, Christopher, 40
Bilderbuch, 98–99, 101 Riegel, Herman, 109–110
Minor, Ryan M., 229n19 Romanticism: fascination with past, 8, 11,
Modernism, 3, 11, 30, 166, 177–178, 184– 16, 22, 24, 26–27, 30; and German lan-
188 guage, 43, 45, 90; and French Revolution,
Monumentality, 110–111, 114–118. See also 78, 103–104; and German nationalism,
Brahms, Works, Triumphlied 151. See also Christianity
Morgan, Robert P., 172–173 Rückert, Friedrich, 25
Morik, Werner, 18
Mosse, George L., 147 Schack, Adolf Friedrich von, 29
Motzkin, Leo, Blackbook: The Position of Scherer, Georg, 15–16
Jews in Germany, 179, 182 Scherer, Wilhelm. See German language
Mühlfeld, Richard, 167 Schering, Arnold, 111
Schiller, Friedrich, 35, 108
Nagel, Willibald, 178 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 108
National festivals, 143, 145, 147–149, 151 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst, 32,
Nationalism, German, 3–9, 32–33, 102, 144
103–104, 109–110, 117–118, 134, 147– Schoenberg, Arnold, 177, 184; “Brahms the
148, 166, 187–193; distinction from patri- Progressive,” 3, 5, 188–189; “National
otism, 4; cultural, 8–11, 45, 46, 78, 185– Music,” 188–189
187; völkisch, 11–12, 118, 144, 145, 147, Scholz, Bernhard, 103
178. See also Romanticism Schopenhauer, Arthur, 31, 171
National Socialist Party (Nazis), 2, 5, 11, Schubert, Franz, 1; “Der Lindenbaum,” 13
102, 165–167, 179, 180, 183, 184, 186– Schubring, Adolf, 77, 82
187, 190, 192 Schumann, Clara, 24, 33–34, 64, 76, 170
Nazarene painters, 109 Schumann, Robert, 8, 10, 26, 33–34, 38–41,
Neudeutsche Schule (New German School), 65, 170, 175, 234n27; “Neue Bahnen,”
9–10, 12, 178, 189 40, 134; Requiem für Mignon, 40
Niederdeutsch (low German), 174–175, 178 Schütz, Heinrich, 69, 75, 139–140, 162
Niederwald Denkmal, 147–148 Sedantag, 147–148
Niemann, Walter, 172–178, 188, 191 Sessions, Roger, 179
Nipperdey, Thomas, 118 Siegessäule (monument), 118–119, 126
Notley, Margaret, 6, 179, 210n16 Signale für die musikalische Welt, 10
Novalis (Hardenberg, Friedrich Leopold Simrock, Clara, 31, 133
von), 8, 24, 32 Simrock, Fritz, 31, 106, 133, 136, 167,
“Nun danket alle Gott” (chorale), 148. See 180
also Brahms, Works, Triumphlied Spies, Hermine, 172
“Nur wer den lieben Gott läßt walten” (cho- Spitta, Philipp, 105, 139, 172
rale), 69 Spitzer, Daniel, 180
Steinberg, Michael P., 75
Ochs, Siegfried, 219n4 Stekel, Hanns Christian, 33–35
Stolzing, Josef, 179–180
Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 24 Strauß, Richard, 183
Percy, Thomas, Reliques of Ancient English Suk, Joseph, 31
Poetry, 168 Sybel, Heinrich von, 146–147
Petersen, Peter, 104, 224n14 Symphony, community forming function, 2,
Pietism, 4, 11 115–116, 133–135
Pinson, Koppel S., 4
Prieberg, Fred K., 179, 180, 182 Third Reich. See National Socialist Party
(Nazis)
Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio), Sistine Madonna, Thirty Years’ War, 76, 99
98–99 Tovey, Donald Francis, 89
Rehberg, Walter and Paula, 190–191 Townson, Michael, 44–45
Reinthaler, Karl, 37, 42–43, 76, 90, 94, 106 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 146–147
 Index 243

Vaughan, William, 225n27 Werner, Anton von: fresco for the Siegessäule
Volk, the, 9, 11–18, 24–25, 29–30, 151, 152, monument, 118–119, 126; Proclamation
162–164, 174–176, 178, 184–185. See of the Empire at Versailles, 119
also German language Widmann, Josef Viktor, 38, 151, 215n14,
223n8
Wagner, Richard, 9–10, 11–12, 16–17, 42, Wilfferodt, Felix, 174, 178
79, 102, 116, 131, 132, 184, 185; Wilhelm I, German Kaiser, 63, 76, 101, 105,
Brahms-Wagner dichotomy, 3, 4–6, 131, 116, 118, 137, 148, 226n42
174, 177, 188, 190 Wilhelm II, German Kaiser, 63, 118, 137
Weiner, H. B., 189–190 Wüllner, Franz, 136, 228n11