Johannes Brahms, 1853
Chicago Chorale has performed a lot of music by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) over the course of our history. Our CD, "A Chorale Christmas," features one of his motets, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her; we have presented the two piano/four hands version of his German Requiem; and we have sung various of his motets in combination with works by Bruckner, Mendelssohn, and Rheinberger. But all of that was several years ago; we have focused primarily on twentieth and twenty-first-century music since we last tackled him. This winter, though, we have returned to two of his most beautiful and famous a cappella works, Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen? and Ich aber bin elend.
Brahms, like Mendelssohn, was thought by his detractors to be conservative, even reactionary, in his own time. He adhered to time-honored forms and genres— "pure music"—while his contemporaries in the New German School veered in a more rhapsodic, freely expressive direction, often in response to outside, non-musical stimuli. Some critics found his music inexpressive and overly academic. Fortunately, better heads and ears prevailed: Brahms enjoyed a brilliant, highly-productive career, composing for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, voice, and chorus. His works in all these genres are performed regularly; his place on the A-list of historic European composers is secure.
Also, like Mendelssohn, Brahms grew up in a musical environment but on a different social plane. His father was a jobbing musician, playing both winds and strings; his mother was a seamstress. Recognizing his talent, his parents arranged musical training for him and encouraged him to pursue a performing career. He was energetic and independent, and, though he lacked the Rinancial backing and social connections enjoyed by Mendelssohn, he met inRluential people who would help him develop a successful career, as both pianist and composer.
Brahms' family was Lutheran, but he did not practice any religion as an adult. Nonetheless, he was well acquainted with the Bible and set numerous Biblical texts, both in his major German Requiem and in his numerous a cappella motets. As a young man, he studied a number of J.S. Bach's cantatas and often based his own motets on Bach's models. He composed Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen? in 1877 in memory of Hermann Göß, who had died after suffering from a prolonged illness. He reused musical material from an unfinished Latin mass, Missa canonica, which he had begun in 1856. Very much in Bach's style, he structured the motet as a series of three movements— including a fugue and a canon for six voices— followed by a harmonization of Luther's chorale, "Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin."
The second Brahms motet on our program, Ich aber bin elend, consists of a single movement for an eight-part double chorus and is probably the last choral work he composed (1889). Though brief in duration, it expresses the same fears, doubts, and hope for salvation that Brahms explores at greater length in the earlier Warum.