While at a break point, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth for the Colson Center on John Stone Street.

On Good Friday, 1867, a complete version of Johannes Brahms' German Requiem premiered,

had Brem and Cathedral.

Brahms would later add an additional movement to the piece in 1868.

Now the word German in the title is notable.

You see the text for traditional Requiem's came from the Catholic Requiem Mass and were

thus in Latin.

Brahms, however, rejected the language and the structure and content of the Requiem

Mass.

Instead, he used text from Luther's translation of the Bible, which he had learned growing

up in the Lutheran Church.

And yet, by most accounts, Brahms was a free thinker, not a believer.

For example, the German Requiem does not contain texts that deal with salvation in Christ.

So what then, can Christians make of his masterful choral and orchestral music?

While for background, the piece seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by the loss

of people that were close to Brahms.

In 1856, roughly ten years before the composition premiered, Brahms' close friend Robert Schum

and died.

Some of the music composed by Brahms in the wake of his death was later incorporated into

the Requiem.

In 1865, Brahms' mother died.

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