Learn about the German Requiem by Brahm’s and listen, too

The idea of composing a requiem in the German language based on texts from the Lutheran Bible and the Apocrypha began to take shape in Brahms’ mind in 1857, a year after the death of his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann. But it wasn’t until 1865, following the death of Brahms’ mother, that he took up composition of the music in earnest.

After another three years, the work stood complete, having grown from a choral piece into a cantata, and then into a seven-movement Requiem for chorus, soloists and orchestra. In the process, it became the central work of Brahms’ career, the one that established him as a composer of major stature and linked two of the most important spheres of his lifelong musical endeavor, the vocal and the symphonic.