Johannes Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem
(Joint concert with the Cornell University Chorus & Glee Club)

Performance Date:	24 March 2008
Venue:	Tsuen Wan Town Hall Auditorium
Music Director:	Jerome Hoberman Prof Scott Tucker
Choir Members:	click here
Soloists:	Yuki Ip, soprano Brian Montgomery, baritone
Orchestra:	click here
Rehearsal Pianist:	Emas Au
Program:	1st half : Repertoire performed by the Cornell University Chorus & Glee Club
	- Fengyang Song - Guessing - Riding on a Mule - Diu Diu Deng
	Chen Yi, arr.
	- The Flowing Stream/The Sun is Rising
	Steven Stucky and Chen Yi, arr.
	- All My Trials
	Norman Luboff, arr.
	- Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
	William Dawson, arr.
	2nd half : Performed by The Hong Kong Bach Choir
	Ein deutsches Requiem
	Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

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PROGRAM NOTE

“Such a great man, such a great soul, but he believes in nothing.” [Antonín Dvorák, on Johannes Brahms]

Johannes Brahms, in his life as in his art, gained strength from looking both backward toward the security of established forms and forward toward an uncertain, but always inviting, future. In life he craved regularity and the solitude necessary for work (at least he did after rejection by Clara Schumann, the love of his life and his mentor’s widow, marked the end of his youth) in contrast to his rather chaotic childhood in Hamburg. An independent thinker, he was a fervent admirer of Bismarck and German nationalism, yet he hated parochialism. While living in an increasingly anti-Semitic environment he decried such attitudes and enjoyed many, if not most, of his closest friendships with Jews (above all with the violinist Joseph Joachim). And as a composer Brahms sought new directions in the organization of musical material – methods that eventually were to lead to the twentieth-century innovations of Schoenberg and his school – even while striving to conserve the past and mistrusting the tonal adventurousness of Liszt and Wagner.

None of Brahms’ works illustrates his Janus-like posture toward music and life better than the German Requiem. The Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, as a subject for composition, was itself a historical artifact for musicians by Brahms’ day. It had become a standard structure for musical ideas – much as a Madonna and Child or a Pietà were for painters of the Renaissance and later eras – and was bound by accepted formalities such as the expectation that fugues would occur at particular moments in the text. Like many creators, Brahms preferred to use traditional forms as templates for the imagination. In other words, like Haydn and Stravinsky he liked to place compositional restrictions on himself, believing that by accepting them his creativity would be set free. Even though he compiled the text of the German Requiem from Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible rather than from any liturgy, Brahms structured several movements of his work as if they were parts of a Catholic Requiem, building them to climaxes relieved by the playing-out of fugues, and in this way creating parallels to various sections of the traditional Missa pro defunctis.

Ein deutsches Requiem is an example of a work that is religious without being liturgical. Although entitled “Requiem”, it has no function other than to be performed in concert, and bears no particular relationship to the Catholic Requiem. In it there is no reference to Christ (nor, indeed, to any explicit sectarian symbol). There is no vision of the Day of Judgment. The traditional Requiem is a prayer for the soul of the departed, but Brahms’ German Requiem is addressed to those who need consolation on earth: to him, they are the ones who need help.

Brahms was not a practicing religious man; he was a humanist and an agnostic. He nevertheless read the Bible regularly throughout his life, and chose his texts from deep familiarity with them. Rather than making a theological statement, Brahms’ selections reflect a personal expression, using words with which he felt at home. He was preparing a universal work; his use of the word “German” in the title should be understood more as vernacular than as nationalist. He referred to the work, in a letter to his muse Clara Schumann, as “a kind of German Requiem”:

I will confess that I would very gladly omit the ‘German’ as well, and simply put ‘of Mankind’, also quite deliberately and consciously do without passages such as John Ch. 3 Verse 16. [‘For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’] On the other hand, however, I did accept many a thing because I am a musician, because I was making use of it, because I cannot challenge or strike out the text of my revered bards, not even a ‘from henceforth.’ [This last comment refers to the words ‘von nun an’ in the final movement, which imply that salvation is only destined for Christian believers.]

In his eagerness to emphasize the work’s universality Brahms was willing to make concessions, as is evident from his letters. “What seems most practical in this work, I suppose, is that each movement can definitely be performed individually… A Latin text is thoroughly out of place in this work… That leaves only England and an English text, which would do quite well, certainly, and in any case already fits of its own.” Some concessions, however, merely facilitated performances: “Of course I don’t ever expect to hear more than one harp! But then I also write for Waldhorns and the most beautiful D flat trumpets without hope of hearing their sound. In fact, I’ll also write for contrabassoon, indeed two of them, simply because I find that we should have them or else be deprived of a lovely bass – not merely for my D [at the end of the third movement].”

Brahms’ first ideas for the work dated back to the institutionalization and death of Robert Schumann in the mid-1850s. The idea turned into action with the death in 1865 of Brahms’ beloved mother, who, seventeen years older than his ne’er-do-well, band-musician-turned-double-bassist father, had been divorced the previous year. He completed it quickly, but at that time the work had only six movements. A few years later, in 1868, Brahms inserted what is now the fifth movement (the only moment in the work in which a woman’s voice is heard alone) dedicated to his mother’s memory. When, in 1873, Joachim proposed to perform the Requiem at a festival dedicated to Schumann, the idea came full circle: “If you were to consider the situation and how it relates particularly to me, you would know how much and how profoundly a piece like the Requiem is altogether Schumann’s. And how, in the secret recesses of my mind, it therefore had to seem quite self-evident to me that it would indeed be sung to him.”

The première of the complete German Requiem was given on Good Friday, 1868, in the cathedral of Bremen. The ecclesiastical authorities would only permit the performance there if an introductory work was added that would explicitly refer to redemption through Christ. On that occasion the choice was the air “I know that my redeemer liveth” from Handel’s Messiah, a gesture that could only have irked the composer. Brahms, though, was an ardent lover and student of the music of Bach more than of Handel; he advised and subscribed to the first complete edition of Bach’s works, and as a conductor gave the first modern performances of several cantatas. So it is entirely appropriate that his Requiem has become, in recent years, among The Hong Kong Bach Choir and Orchestra’s most frequently performed works.

Ein deutsches Requiem since its première has often been performed in a memorial context, in much the same way that Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings is – though Barber never planned his piece for such a purpose. For example, the conductor Kurt Masur replaced an originally-scheduled New York Philharmonic program with Brahms’ Requiem following the September 11th attacks in 2001. In tonight’s audience, everyone may have a person, a group, an idea to mourn. What Brahms realized was the commonality of all loss and grief, and of all consolation.

- Jerome Hoberman -

Cornell University Chorus & Glee Club

Cornell University Chorus & Glee Glub
China Tour 2008

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Choir Members singing at this concert

The Hong Kong Bach Choir

Sopranos	Altos	Tenors	Basses
Joanne Chan	Anita Chan	Fred Chapman	Raymond Choi*
Renee Chan	Karen Chan	Pat Hase	Ramiel Fong
Lilian Chen	Isabelle Duthoit	Ronald Lau	Harry Lau
Erica Chuk	Janet Fung	Herbert Lee	Joseph Su
Lorrie Coleman	Catherine Ho	Wai-kei Lo	John Yonker
Jessie Kong	Eleanor Jones	Kellogg Ng
Regina Lee	Ethel Sha	Jo Leung Pang
Polin Leow	Norma Tutty	Raymond Pang
Felicia Leung		David Sorton
Caroline Milburn		Benny Wong
Alice Wong		Oliver Wong*
Jennie Wong*		John Yonker
Francesca Yau
Josie Yau
* Section Leaders

The Cornell University Glee Club

Soprano I	Soprano II	Alto I	Alto II	Tenor I	Tenor II	Bass I	Bass II
Kristen Dilzell	Evelyn Ambriz	Julia Adolphe	Robin Baur	Tom Farello	Eric Becker	Oren Berman	Asa Craig
Rosa von Gleichen	Allison Bailey	Tiffani Burgess	Shara Bellamy	Kevin Gammariello	Don Cerio	Abe Cantwell	Joel Dankwa
Sarah Hansen	Meredith Bennett-Smith	Morgan Beschle	Maria Carlson	William Halloran	Tyler Coatney	Daniel Dryden	Tyler Herman
Rebecca Hartman	Rachel Harewood	Alexandra Denby	Nina Coutinho	Daniel Hemberger	John Crooke	Jeff Eng	John Lee
Anne Kim	Kristel Keegan	Julia Hillabrant	Lisa Grossman	Wallace Hui	Evan Graham	Amar Kelkar	Bill Price
Allison Munoz	Sally Kim	Lucy Huang	Becky Sopchak	Matt Perkins	Nicholas Nuccio	Matthew Nulty	Matt Robbins
Marguerite Shaffer	Elena Moreno	Kayti Lausch	Dara Taylor	Ryan Peterson	Thomas Riehl	Scott Resnick	Aaron Rubin
Miranda Struck	Allison Fritts-Penniman	Sade McDougal	Becky Van Tassell	Adam Piel	Colin Riley	Patrick Vacca	Leonard Rubin
Wei-Li Woo	Claire Schmidt	Valerie Mondestin	Caroline Wee	Mark Thomas	Ben Rosenfield	Bill Wright	Ethan Russell
Wendy Yau	Daniela White	Laura Nagrich		Jason Toris		Yisong Yue	Jacob Shapiro
		Emily Rivest		Steve Welker

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Orchestra

First Violins	Wong Sze-hang, concertmaster
	Bei Zhu
	Rachel Mellado
	Zhang Xi
	Christine Wong Kar-yee
	Emile Junge
Second Violins	Cheng Li
	William Davidson
	Mao Yiguo
	Tomoko Tanaka Mao
	Fang Jie
	Gui Li
Violas	Ricardo Zwietisch
	Kaori Wilson
	Cui Hong-wei
	Sun Bin
	Wang Jun
	Li Ming
Cellos	Chen Yi-chun
	Chang Pei-chieh
	Yalin Song
Basses	George Lomdaridze
	Samuel Ferrer
	Jonathan Van Dyke
	Philip Powell
Flutes	Megan Sterling
	Sebastian Jacot
	Ivy Chuang
Oboes	Michael Wilson
	Christopher Chen
Clarinets	John Schertle
	Michael Campbell
Bassoons	Kam Shui
	Adam Treverton Jones
Horns	Mark Vines
	May Van Norman
	Lisa Rogers
	Homer Lee Siu-lam
Trumpets	Christopher Moyse
	Douglas Waterston
Trombones	Jarod Vermette
	Maciek Walicki
	Michael Priddy
Tuba	Paul Luxenberg
Timpani	James Boznos
Harp	Chris Sidenius

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