DESTINATION // BRAHMS A GERMAN REQUIEM AT THE KIMMEL CULTURAL CAMPUS

Simply Human

Brahms’ A German Requiem, bringing Lenny back in Maestro, and the cheeky delight of Radical Wolfe

by Heather Shayne Blakeslee

EXCERPT //

The great joys and sorrows of our lives are often captured in music, whether it’s a choir singing a requiem funeral mass, or the soaring melodies of popular songs such as “Somewhere” in West Side Story. The Covid pandemic kept us apart, and its lasting effects—physical, psychological, and, for some performance venues, existential—are still with us. We may crave connection and communion more than we realize, especially in the dark days of winter with wars raging around the world: Johannes Brahms, Leonard Bernstein, and writer Tom Wolfe are here to bring us back around to beauty, joy, personal heartache, and laughter.  

When the Hamburg-born composer Johannes Brahms began work on his A German Requiem in 1865 at the age of 32, he made two major choices that set it apart from other requiems. First, he chose to forgo the usual Latin text for passages from the famous Luther German Bible (translated in 1522) so that more people could experience its full impact. Second, though some sources say the death of his mother during this period was an influence as he finished the piece, he wrote it not to mourn the dead in a traditional Catholic funeral mass tradition but to comfort the living with messages of hope, solace, and consolation. //

---

---

For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //