The moment I heard the first bars of the Brahms Requiem that evening, I lit up inside. The second movement, in particular, took me on an emotional rollercoaster. I was captivated, haunted, and elated. It reduced me to tears. I didn’t read any of the translations of the German text that evening. There was no intellectual grasp of a spiritual message, no deeper meaning, just a pure sensation of the invisible made auditory. The music overtook me. I spent weeks afterward in the music library listening to recordings of the second movement in particular, trying to integrate that experience of the music into my body.
Not long after this experience, I graduated and grappled with the direction I would take in my life. Like many young artists, I felt pulled in many directions, unsure of how to make a life out of art. I moved from Indiana to Kansas City. I went months without listening to classical music during some of my early years in Kansas City, too distracted trying to make ends meet to sit saturated in beauty. I began to seek God more deeply, and eventually, his Spirit came alive in me. I began to understand that Sehnsucht was a longing for him, for the far off country of perfect relationship with him. It was like my entire life my sight had been out of focus, like the experience of being at the eye doctor with the wrong lens. The doctor snaps the right lens into place, and suddenly what was fuzzy and indistinct has sharp edges and a shape. God’s presence in my life gave these powerful, indistinct forces of beauty a shape. His shape.
The Brahms Requiem changed forever for me when I woke up one morning in the summer of 2014 after a gut-wrenching nightmare about the death of a close family member. It was one of those dreams where I woke up and felt the physical weight of grief and stress because my brain experienced the same neurological effects as I would in waking life. I made myself get out of bed to go for my morning walk on a trail near my home, eyes straining in the darkness of late summer dawn. That summer I spent most of my four-mile walks listening to sermons, podcasts, and Proverbs, but on this particular day I was still shaken by the grief of my subconscious, and melancholy lingered. I skimmed my music playlists and saw the Brahms Requiem, unlistened to for several years. I was overcome by the desire to press into the feeling of melancholy, so I clicked on it. The shuffle feature pulled up movement two, the same movement I had been obsessed with years before.
Despite my powerful experiences with this music before, it was like I heard that movement for the first time that day. I looked up the translation of the biblical text and read it as I walked. I let the power of the music overtake me like I used to, but I was a different woman than I was the first time I had heard it. I had stood in the valley of the shadow of death at the funerals of friends too young to die. I had made a transition from a spiritual seeker to a woman captivated by God. I had battled deep depression, crippling anxiety, and disillusionment with my life. I had walked with those close to me through battles with mental health and addiction. I had watched friends divorce, have miscarriages, die of cancer, and bury their children, and I had yet to turn thirty. My eyes were wide open to the brokenness of a world that is not functioning the way it was meant to. One of the best biographies on Brahms, written by Jan Swafford, says that he wrote the opening theme for the second movement (intended for a symphony) the day that one of his best friends, Robert Schumann, jumped from a bridge and attempted to end his life (1). Brahms was living with the Schumanns at the time, and he was a witness to the pain of Schumann’s decline and eventual death from mental illness. Schumann left behind his wife, Clara, also a famous musician, and eight children.
That morning on the trail, I was disarmed and vulnerable from my dream. I felt the tears well up as the choir began its muted declaration of Isaiah 40:6 (2).
“All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades…”
By the time it reached its first great and terrible climax (3), my tears flowed freely. It was the only reaction I could have to the powerful reality of death that Brahms had covered with his thick, powerful harmonic voice. The music creates a very real sense of the relentless force of death in the listener, to create an irresistible wave of sound that you are powerless to stop. It gave me the ability to see the world through a clear lens as a thing whose most shimmering pinnacles will inevitably be overcome by the ash of death. Though our beauty is as delicate and matchless as the most precious flower, we are ultimately just like that flower and will wither, all color will drain from us, and we will eventually be returned to the dust. Thankfully, Brahms gives us a glimpse into the hope that God provides us in his choice of the next text for the second movement, James 5:7 (4).
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.
The music lightens and lilts, as though to let sunlight through the clouds. At the ends of the two musical sections of this interlude, the underlying music pulls at the ends of this hope, attempting to unravel it. Brahms does successfully unravel it eventually, dragging us back into the dark beauty of his setting of Isaiah’s words once again (5). That morning, it became clear to me that this musical theme, though I had already heard it, seemed to sting more, and it almost felt cruel. I thought of Lazarus, raised from the dead. I couldn’t help but think about the fact that though Lazarus was raised, he still died a physical death again. If he didn’t outlive his sisters, they had to mourn him again. And if we are healed from sickness, eventually we will have to mourn the loss of our health again. So where is the hope that endures forever?
