THE STORY BEHIND: Brahms' "How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place" from "A German Requiem"

On May 7, Leonard Slatkin, Providence Singers, Talise Trevigne, Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Colin Ainsworth, Michael Dean and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present Beethoven 9.

THE STORY BEHIND: Brahms' How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place from A German Requiem   

Title: A German Requiem, op.45, Mvt. IV (How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place)
Composer: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: Last performed May 5, 2012 with Larry Rachleff conducting, Providence Singers, and soloists Elizabeth Weigle and Randall Scarlata. In addition to a chorus, this piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns and strings.

The Story:

It was the longest work Johannes Brahms ever wrote, and it was the first work to bring him international prominence. He named it A German Requiem to distinguish its texts and intent from the traditional Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic liturgy. His was not a work for the dead. Rather, it was music to bring solace to the living, with words to help us all cope with the ideas of suffering and death. Brahms meant his work to have a universal message, and for that reason, he chose and coordinated quotations from the Old and New Testaments as well as from the Apocrypha. One of the composer’s few remarks concerning A German Requiem underlines his effort to give the work universal meaning: “I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and simply put Human. . . .”
       
A choral-orchestral work of this magnitude and depth does not develop quickly. Brahms’s labor on it went back to the mid-1850s, when he composed a sonata for two pianos (which never appeared in that form). The slow movement of the sonata became the “funeral march” second movement of the Requiem.
       
The work had not yet crystallized in Brahms’s mind when, in February 1865, he received news that his mother was dying. He could not reach her before she passed away. The depression following her loss stayed with him for a very long time, and he tried to overcome it by playing and composing.
       
Over the next two years, the Requiem began to take shape. In December 1867, the first three movements were performed in Vienna, but by this time, Brahms was hard at work on three more movements. A full performance was presented on Good Friday of the following year at the Bremen Cathedral. Attendees of this momentous event included many of Brahms’s friends and supporters, including Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, and old father Brahms. The performance was a resounding success and instantly made the 35-year-old composer one of the most prominent in Germany. During the following year, it was performed 20 times in Germany. Over the next few years, audiences heard it in London, St. Petersburg, and Paris — all accepting the Requiem as a masterwork.
       
In the Requiem, movement IV (“How lovely is Thy dwelling place”) is unique for its sweet character as a choral song. For many listeners, this is the highpoint of the Requiem, and it is definitely the movement most often extracted for separate performance. It is a flowing choral part-song in which the chief melody is most often in the soprano part. The text is direct and personal:

How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
For my soul, it longeth, yea fainteth, for the courts of the Lord :
my soul and body crieth out, yea for the living God.
Blest are they, that dwell within Thy house : they praise Thy name evermore.

Psalm 84 vv. 1, 2, 4.

Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink © 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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