June 10, 2012 - Proper 5

Herzlich tut mich erfreuen Op.122 No.4 -
                                                                  Johannes Brahms
Requiem Op.45: "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" - 
                                                                  Johannes Brahms
Locus Iste - Anton Bruckner
Nachspiel - Anton Bruckner

Hymns: #569 Russia, #394 Wilderness,
              #594 Cwm Rhondda
                                                                                                                                 
The music for this week comes from the pens of two German Romantic “B’s,” Brahms and Bruckner.

The German Requiem Op. 45 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) has enjoyed immense popularity and the fourth movement How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place is a piece that can be found in the repertoire of most college, community and large church choirs. The Brahms Requiem is a piece that was at the time groundbreaking, and looking at the literature which has been written since, trend-setting. This work draws on the text of the Lutheran Bible rather than the Latin Mass for the Dead and is written to comfort the living rather than to pray for those who have died. Indeed, this piece has paved the way for Requiems by composers like Britten, Hindemith, Rutter, Chilcott, and Leavitt that have combined the Latin texts with other Biblical texts or poetry. The German Requiem was premiered at Bremen Cathedral on Good Friday 1868 and was an enormous success which marked a turning point in Brahms’s career. Brahms added the fifth movement in memory of his mother and the piece received its first complete performance in 1869. As with his first symphony, Brahms was very deliberate about the composition of the Requiem. The piece makes use of thematic material that he composed as early as 1854.  The fourth movement, How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place is a setting of Psalm 84: 1,2,4 which opens with a tranquil duet between the clarinet and flute before the choir enters on a first inversion tonic chord which I have always found interesting. The movement grows and becomes more and more imitative first featuring a the tenors answered by the basses and then the women before returning to the homophonic texture of the opening. After an expanded version of the opening theme, the piece breaks into an active fugal section on the text “They praise Thy name evermore” (verse 4 of the Psalm text) before drawing to a close with echoes of the opening material.

The prelude is also from the hand of Brahms. It is the choral prelude Herzlich tut mich erfreuen (I Am Deeply Gladdened) No. 4 from Brahms’s only posthumously published work, the Op. 122 Eleven Chorale Preludes. These chorales are regarded by most organists as Brahms’s final commentary on life and are written with a sense of finality, an interesting commentary on life for a man that was not known to be religious. The text of this chorale (the last written of the first set of seven) reads:

My heart rejoices in the wonderful summertime:
God will make everything beautifully, eternally new.
The heavens and earth will be created anew,
all creatures will become wondrously beautiful and clear.

The piece is very pianistic with arpeggios throughout supporting the chorale tune in the soprano. The piece gives no specific registration but has dynamics that suggest manual changes with the same kinds of stops on each. The setting of this chorale is filled with quiet joy and calm and peaceful energy.

The communion anthem is Locus Iste by Anton Bruckner(1824-1896). Bruckner’s life is not really reflected in his work, and his work is not reflective of his life. Bruckner was a devout Catholic that received much of his early training at St. Florian’s monastery in Austria. It was here that his love for the organ and for music was cultivated. He led a quiet life and enjoyed great success as an organist and composer. His symphonic works are written on a grand scale while his sacred music has a vulnerable innocence to it that makes it instantly accessible and endearing. Written for the dedication of the votive chapel for the cathedral of Linz, this gradual motet is designed for the dedication of a church building. The piece is in ABA form and despite the tradition of church music being more antiquated sounding than its secular counterparts, the harmonies are purely Romantic. The piece is simple and beautiful with rich full bodied harmonies in the A section and haunting imitative writing in the B section.

The postlude, Nachspiel, was written between 1845 and 1856 while Bruckner was organist at the Augustinian Abbey. The piece begins on full organ and then breaks into a fugue before the return of the full organ section. The organ that Bruckner played was the second largest in Austria and despite his limited number of compositions for the instrument; he was renowned throughout the world for his improvisations at the organ. This piece has an improvisatory feel to it. The counterpoint is simple and clean throughout and is gestural in nature – much like an improvisation.  A simple but beautiful end to the service.