Singing Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem

March 7, 2010 performance of Johannes Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem by the Brookline Chorus at All Saints Parish church in Brookline, MA

A belated entry (I've been busy the last month, didn't have time to blog).

It was an afternoon concert on a sunny Sunday. The sun lit up the huge stained glass windows of All Saints. Friends were in the audience. I can't imagine a better place or time for this Requiem.

I loved singing this more than anything else I've sung since joining the Chorus, except perhaps for Carmina Burana. It's challenging and long. You have to pace yourself in order to have enough energy left for the last movement. It's a terrific journey.

To me the most heart-stopping moments come early, in the second movement, when we sing:

Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret
und die Blume abgefallen.

For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man,
as the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower thereof falleth away. I Peter 1:24

We sing the words at first as a funeral march, a dirge, an acquiescent, resigned lament about the temporary nature of all life.

But then, a few minutes later, we blast out the very same words in an almost violent complaint against God and the universe. There's an orchestral buildup to this fortissimo over many bars. The music builds in tension and volume. You can see it, of course, in our director, Lisa Graham; with her increasingly tense gestures and her face, she makes you, the orchestra, and the audience understand that these are also very angry words.