The Brahms Requiem: Questions for the Conductor

Along with questions about his musical and textual motivation throughout the Requiem, Brahms left several other issues to puzzle over—from interpretive matters like tempo to more practical programming concerns.

1.      How to program A German Requiem?

At 70 minutes, the Requiem is a little short to be performed on its own. Still, says Ann Howard Jones, who assisted Shaw with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus in the 1980s and 90s, she doesn’t remember Shaw programming another piece to go with it. Elsewhere she’s heard it paired with Brahms’ Serenade No. 2, which comes from roughly the same period as the Requiem. It’s the right length—about 30 minutes—but it does not address a related programming issue, raised by Atlanta Symphony Vice President for Artistic Planning Evans Mirageas: “I’m frustrated at having to hire a soprano for six minutes and a baritone for eight minutes.” As he told symposium participants, for the ASO performance he hit on the “cheeky” solution of asking composer Jonathan Leshner to compose a piece that would feature the same solo voices and fit alongside the Brahms in a two-hour concert window. The result was “Zohar,” inspired by Jewish mystical tradition and premiered April 14 during the symposium.

2.      What qualities to look for in the soloists?

For the soprano, patience helps. She has to sit for the better part of an hour waiting for the fifth movement. Jones says Shaw once considered letting a soprano remain offstage till just before her appearance. When it comes to vocal quality, Leonard Ratzlaff, who teaches conducting at the University of Alberta, says be selective: “The part requires a wonderful spin on top; it can’t be too stentorian.”

The first question for the male soloist is, bass or baritone? While the higher register seems to be the common choice, the score contains mixed signals. In the third movement, the solo part is marked “bass”; in the sixth movement it’s “baritone.” Musicologist MichaelMusgrave points out that each movement calls for the same range. He speculates the inconsistent markings were simply a copying error.

3.      What about the organ? And contrabassoons?

The score marks the organ part “ad lib.” “Was that Brahms or the publisher?” Musgrave asks. “We can’t tell.” He says that at first, Brahms called for contrabassoons. Later, when he penciled in the organ part, he deleted all but two of their appearances. The holdovers were a mistake, Musgrave believes, but they contribute to questions about the bass texture Brahms wanted. According to Musgrave, Brahms complained that without the organ, the bass pedal note doesn’t sound, but perhaps the part is marked “ad lib” because he could not be certain an organ would always be available for performances of the Requiem.

4.      How much time to take between movements?

Jones answers this question by saying, “Don’t interrupt the pulse.” Given the big difference between movements one and two, she says it’s fine to take your time, less so between the second and third. Moving quickly from the third, which ends with a grand fugue, to the lyrical fourth, “Wie lieblich,” creates a vivid contrast, she’s found. At the end of the sixth-movement fugue, she says Shaw wrote “attacca” in his score, impelling the horns, cellos, and sopranos to surge into the final movement, “Selig sind die Toten.” Craig Jessop, who apprenticed with Shaw during the 1980s, found Shaw’s approach to be a “transcendent experience.”

5.      How to set tempo?

Jones recalls Shaw stating that one of most important things a conductor can do is set a proper tempo, to which AndréThomas, director of choral activities at Florida State University adds another Shaw declaration: “Tempo is the number one most difficult thing about Brahms.” Brahms contributed to the challenge, Musgrave notes, by asking that metronome markings be removed in the last edition of the Requiem published in his lifetime. The composer once said, “I myself have never believed that my blood and a mechanical instrument go well together.”

That gives the conductor a lot of latitude. Ratzlaff distributed a chart comparing tempi in 14 commercial recordings of the Requiem. Timings range from Roger Norrington’s brisk 62-minute performance with the London Classical Players (1992) to Sergiu Celibidache’s leisurely 88-minute effort with the Munich Philharmonic (1981). Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony (1984) are in the middle of the pack at 70 minutes. Shaw had the ASO librarian track his tempi, and he’d evaluate them himself by listening to recordings. Copies of his rehearsal scores, which he gave to Thomas, show metronome markings at various passages indicating how fast he’d taken them, along with brief comments.

6.      How to handle seams in the Requiem?

The “seams” Jones and other faculty pointed to in the symposium session are tricky transitions from one tempo to another. As an example, she cited the second movement, where the chorus sings, “Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit.” “You turn the page and see ‘Allegro non troppo.’ How do you get there from ‘Un poco sostenuto’?” Jones asks. At that point, according to Ratzlaff’s chart, Shaw’s recording goes from 64 to 132 beats per minute. As a guide, Ratzlaff recommends looking closely at the string writing in the “Un poco sostenuto” section, and being able to hear the textures.

Asked in a later session how he approaches potential trouble spots, Atlanta Symphony music director Robert Spano acknowledged that all the detail in the Requiem demands attention, but it can also trip a conductor up. “The real issue in a piece like this is steering the big ship. You have to trust the imagination, in conjunction with the ear, as your principal tool.”