| BRAHMS – A GERMAN REQUIEM | ||||||||||
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Postcards from the Sky Marjan Mozetich’s musical style has progressed along a typical trajectory for many older composers over the last 50 years. Beginning in conformity with the austere atonality of mid-century Expressionism and Serialism, through a minimalism, coming to rest at a somewhat retrogressive Neo-Romanticism. Often these changes in style have resulted from the pressure of audiences, who largely have rejected “difficult and emotionless” modernisms. The three-movement Postcards in the Sky was composed in 1996 for the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra of Ottawa. The movements are: 1. Unfolding Sky: Over a quiet pulse, the melody has a rather otherworldly sound that has come to be associated with outer space. Think back, for example, to “Uranus” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets.  2. Weeping Clouds: Mozetich retains the pulsing and stretched melodic lines into this second “postcard.” A slow repeated melody also underlies the piece, around which the strings weave decorative lines. 3. A Messenger: The pulsing recurs here as well, but Mozetich now concentrates on harmony, guiding the simple three-note melody through various modulations. Born in Italy to Slovenian parents, Marjan Mozetich immigrated to Canada as a child. He started his musical training at age nine. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music, he received assistance from the Canada Council of the Arts to study in Italy with Luciano Berio. From 1991 to 2010 he was on the staff at the School of Music of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He is currently a freelance composer. He has received many commissions, especially from Canadian orchestras and musical ensembles. | ||||||||||
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Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45 Early in 1865 Johannes Brahms’ mother died of a stroke in Hamburg at the age 76. Notified of her illness, he had raced to her bedside but arrived too late. His years away in Vienna had created a distance from his parents, who were of humble, working-class origin and whose marriage had disintegrated despite his attempts to reconcile them. Left with responsibility for his mother, he nevertheless had always regarded her as a source of strength and support. Her death appears to have been a catalyst for the finalization of an idea that had been with him for several years, probably since the tragic final illness of his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann. In an entry in his diary, Schumann writes of the idea of a requiem with a more gentle, comforting text than that of the Catholic Mass for the Dead. Nearly a decade before his mother’s death, Brahms had made sketches (lost with all his other working papers) for a four-movement funeral cantata, which finally came to fruition in the Requiem. The slow movement for a discarded symphony in D minor – which also supplied material for the First Piano Concerto – provided the basis of the Requiem’s second movement funeral march, “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is as grass). Amassing all of these earlier musical and textual ideas, Brahms formally started work on Ein deutsches Requiem, finishing it in August 1866 except for the fifth movement, “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit” (And ye now therefore have sorrow), which he added in1868 after the premiere. The Requiem was to be his longest work and the first to garner him international recognition. The Requiem is a personal statement of faith, intentionally distanced from institutional religion. The German of the title refers only to the language from which the texts were taken and it is meant neither to apply to a single nation nor to a specific religion. Brahms selected a group of Scriptural texts from Martin Luther’s translation of the both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and the Apocrypha, shaping the work in keeping with his own spiritual and musical vision. While the Catholic Mass for the Dead opens with a prayer for the eternal rest of the deceased, by far the largest portion is dominated by the sequence “Dies irae, dies illa,” a poetic depiction of the soul’s terror on the Day of Judgment. In contrast, Brahms Requiem was to be a memorial to the dead, a comfort to those left behind and the promise of eternal redemption. Far from soothing sentimentality, the Requiem, nevertheless, does address the complexities of the meaning of life, death and resurrection. The work as a whole is a grand arch of which the apex, Movement 4, is the choral description of the joy of eternal life. Surrounding it are movements reflecting the pain of death and the search for meaning, as well as teachings on God’s cosmic order. Framing the work as a whole are Movements 1 and 7 offering peace and comfort to the living and the dead. The first three movements of the Requiem address the concerns of all people. The opening movement presents the premise of the entire work, “Selig sind die da Leid tragen” (Blessed are they that mourn), focusing on the mourners rather than on the deceased. The movement is in ternary, ABA, form. The middle section maintains but intensifies the original tone on the words, "Die mit Tränen säen/Werden mit Freuden ernten" (Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy). The second movement is the darkest and longest section of the work, reminding the mourners of the inevitability of death – but not the terror of damnation. It begins with a funeral march for the orchestra, accompanied by the slow beat of the timpani, followed by the chorus solemnly intoning, “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is as grass). In the middle section, beginning as an a cappella chorus, “So seit nun geduldig,…bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn” (Be patient…for the coming of the Lord), Brahms’ take on the final Judgment is redemptive, reflected in the switch to the major and an increase in tempo. A return to the funeral march is followed by a dramatic choral fugue, “Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit” (But the Word of the Lord is eternal), promising eternal salvation. Brahms’s use of climactic fugues – there are three in the Requiem – has its source in the tradition of fugal climaxes in Baroque and Classical settings of the Catholic Mass. In keeping with the text promising redemption, the movement ends in animated settings for each line of the text. Movement 3, “Herr, lehre doch mich” (Lord, teach me that I must die) for baritone and chorus begins the didactic section of the work, a prayer in which the individual is instructed to acknowledge his mortality and the vain pursuit of earthly gratification, and finally to commend his soul to God. In the first part, the baritone maintains a dialogue with the chorus. His search for understanding and hope is symbolized in a series of seemingly aimless modulations into distant keys. Brahms continues his practice of brightening the music in parallel with those lines of the text that promise hope and comfort. The movement concludes with double fugue, one subject for the chorus, the second subject for the orchestra, portraying the return of all righteous souls to the Lord in everlasting peace, "Die gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand" (The righteous souls are in God's hand). Bearing witness to the universality of this prayer, whose text is from the Hebrew Scriptures (Psalm 39), are the arrangements of this movement sung in Reform synagogues on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The gentle “Wie lieblich sind Deine Wohnungen” (How lovely are Thy dwellings) is the central description and promise of eternal life. It is a simple ABA song form for the chorus, whose middle section is a passionate outburst of longing for God, "Mein Leib und Seele freuet sich" (My body and soul cry out). The movement concludes with another fugue of praise, "Die Loben dich immerdar" (They praise thy name forever). The soprano solo that follows, "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" (You now are sorrowful), that promises comfort and eternal joy, for those in mourning as well as the dead. It is highly contrapuntal and is structured like a Bach organ chorale prelude – only here for soprano soloist, orchestra and chorus. Bach used this device occasionally in the cantatas. The soprano sings the chorale melody in counterpoint with the orchestra, while the chorus periodically enters with its own contrapuntal line on the words "Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seiner Mutter tröstet" (I will comfort you, as does a mother). The sixth movement is another dialogue between baritone soloist and chorus, celebrating the eternal kingdom of God. Brahms wrote a great deal of choral music and knew intimately the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. Like the earlier composer, he made extensive use of tone painting in keeping with the text. In the sixth movement, for example, The somber choral opening, "Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt, sondern die zukünftige suchen wir" (Here on earth we have no continuing place, but we seek one to come) against a plodding bass accompaniment gives both the sense of dogged searching, as well as a military tone that foreshadows the battle with Death. The chorus sings “Denn es wird die Posaune schallen, Der Tod ist verschlungen in den Sieg” (Then the trumpet sounds and Death is swallowed up in Victory) in an outburst of hammering militaristic music that ultimately becomes a great fugal song of praise and honor to the Lord. Like the great double fugue of the third movement, the fugue subjects are divided between the orchestra and chorus. The final movement recalls themes – both textual and musical – from the beginning of the Requiem; this time, however, it is the dead, rather than the mourners, who are blessed. The music, however, is more passionate, since it sums up the message of eternal life that has been the principal focus of the entire work. Despite the lukewarm reception in Vienna of the first three movements of the Requiem in 1867, the entire work – minus what is now the fifth movement for soprano and chorus – was premiered on Good Friday 1868 in the cathedral of Bremen to great acclaim. Brahms later added the fifth movement, dedicated specifically to his mother, and the entire work was performed in February of 1869. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2016 | ||||||||||
