Brahms's Requiem and His Mother

 Several years ago, my choir sang Brahms's "Requiem," and someone in the choir shared some interesting notes about the music. I learned how Brahms began to work on this in earnest after the death of Robert Schumann (his mentor) in 1856 and the death of this mother in 1865. Brahms had already started to work on this requiem four years before his mother's death (when he was in his late twenties), but it was her death that really spurred Brahms to focusing on the project more (when he was in his early thirties). I found this striking, not only because he began working on this about the same time that I was when my mom died, but also that he was clearly experiencing grief in the years that were the hardest for me (in my late twenties and early thirties). When I think of Brahms, I envision an Old Master with a long beard, but he was just a young man at this time.

Brahms c. 1866

When the requiem was unveiled as a six-movement piece in 1868, it was criticized because "it never mentioned that redemption could be achieved only through Jesus, or, as [Reinthaler] said, 'the work lacks the whole point on which the Christian religion turns, the sacrificial death of Christ'" (James M. Keller, Program Notes, The Leni and Peter May Choir). Brahms wasn't really impacted by the theological objection (which makes me wonder how he personally reacted to his mom's death and how that may have impacted his own religious views), but he did at in the solo soprano movement "Ihr habt nur Traurigkeit." It seems plausible that he had his own mother in mind, since the text comes from Isaiah: "I will comfort you, as one whom his mother comforts."