Why is light given to the laborious?

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Johannes Brahms (1889)

Why is light given to the laborious? (op.74, no.1) is a motet for mixed choir a cappella by Johannes Brahms , which he composed in June 1878 and published in 1879. He dedicated it to the musicologist Philipp Spitta and described it to Vinzenz Lachner as a "little treatise on the big 'why'".

As in the German Requiem , Brahms combined texts from the Old and New Testaments and added a Luther chorale to the compilation. Comparable to the Requiem, the four-part motet provides insights into his religious ideas, raises questions of theodicy and shows his feeling for the selection of biblical scriptures. In addition to the hymn of Martin Luther , he used lamentations of Job and Jeremias as well as Beatitudes from the letter of James .

While the frame parts are based on the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach , the middle movements fall back on other models. For the first two parts of his composition, Brahms used material from his Missa canonica , which he had already designed in 1859.

Text and music

Job, Léon Bonnat (1880)

The dark four-part opening movement ( slow and expressive ) in D minor revolves around the question of human suffering. Brahms, who was familiar with the madrigal interpretation of texts, used the Book of Job , a central wisdom text of the Bible, from whose third chapter he set a longer passage to music. Prosodically he followed the words and adapted the intervals , dissonances and rhythmic subtleties to the content of the religious statements.

Why has light been given to the laborious,
and life to the troubled hearts who
wait for death and does not come,
and dig it out of the hidden,
who are almost happy and are happy
that they are getting the grave,
and the man who is Is hidden
away , and God covers it from him?

Hi 3,20-26  LUT .

The sentence begins and ends with the question of why theodicy . Right at the beginning, the why of the lament is shouted out with distinctive chords without the listener first knowing what is being asked for. While the first question (forte) leads from D major to floating G minor , the second, dynamically withdrawn, leads from A major to D minor . The second syllable is immediately followed by the central sentence: "Why is light given to the laborious, and life to troubled hearts." The tension between the questions in the word "light" in bar 5 only seemingly resolved because one diminished it The fifth is defeated. The dissonances give the fabric a mood of uncertainty, which continues from bar 7 in the metrically variable counterpoint "and the life of the sad heart" and develops harmoniously from the starting key of D minor to F sharp minor .

The clear structure and the polyphony of the composition are reminiscent of a neo-baroque choral setting. The first 17 bars following the two questions form a canon , in the course of which the individual voices soprano, alto, tenor and bass each start on the dominant of the previous one, resulting in the sequence d - a - e - b - f sharp with a contrapuntal This results in a consistency that is rarely found in Bach's vocal works. This is followed by two more “why” questions (bars 25, 27), the third repetition no longer touches on the question impatiently, but is held for three beats, as it were in astonishment. Now the structure loosens, the movement loses its polyphonic rigor and baroque tendency. This is followed by an almost homophonic , widely flowing and romantic music.

If in the first part the question is asked about the meaning of suffering and dying, which ultimately remains open, the following three sections from the Lamentations of Jeremiah , the Letter of James and Martin Luther's chorale With Fried und Freud I do suggest different perspectives; however, the basic questions are not answered.

Let us
lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven.

Klgl 3.41  LUT

Behold, we give praise to those who endure.
You have heard the patience of Job,
and you have seen the end of the Lord;
for the Lord is merciful and merciful.

Jak 5,11  LUT

With peace and joy I go there,
in God's will,
my heart and mind are comforted,
gentle and quiet.
As God has promised me:
death has become my sleep.

In the middle movements ( little movement , slow and gentle ) Brahms increased the voices to six and made the melos predominantly diatonic and the structure less tension. He did not orientate himself here on Bach's counterpoint, but on old-classical vocal polyphony . Bach used Luther's chorale in his cantata Mit Fried und Freud ich fahrin, BWV 125 .

Like the first part, the final chorale is based on the four-part character typical of Bach and harmoniously shaped by the Doric mode .

Background and special features

In the last section, too, Brahms confronts the listener with the basic question of theodicy. May death deliver from the misery of the world, an eschatological way out using contemporary compositional means will ultimately no longer be possible. Christological references are missing in the slowly and softly fading chorale as well as reconciling references to transcendence .

Urs Fässler describes the work as a “little German requiem”. For him, Brahms leaves the question of the meaning of suffering and dying in this work musically open, which motet is noticeable. Bach also took up this area, for example in the motet for eight voices Come, Jesus, come ( BWV 229) or in the early cantata God's time is the very best time (“Actus tragicus”) - “Lord teach us to remember that we have to die ”, a work that Brahms had studied and performed in Vienna . From the baroque certainty of the redemption of faith , Bach had certainly raised the questions urgently, but always remained in the rhetorical and did not advance to existential doubt. For Brahms, on the other hand, the only thing left for people is the hope of a “mystery” that cannot be rationally opened up, but can only be found humbly, an attitude that is reflected in the second part of his motet in the words of the New Testament: “Let us have our hearts Lift up with your hands to God in heaven ”or“ Behold, we bless those who endure ”. With these words, too, the motet is internally connected to the central statement of consolation from the German Requiem: "I want to console you as one is comforted by his mother." ( Isa. 66:13  LUT )

Philipp Spitta initially hesitated to accept the dedication. Presumably he combined the tradition of the final chorale movement with the renewal of the Protestant liturgy , an attitude that set him apart from Brahms. Since the composer did not want to follow the musicologist's enthusiasm for Bach, he later reconsidered his dedication.

The composer's religious background was already discussed during his lifetime. Heinrich von Herzogenberg assessed his oeuvre as testimony to a “core Protestant and deeply religious man”. During the preparations for the world premiere of the German Requiem, Carl Martin Reinthaler noted in an exchange of letters with Brahms that there was no reference to Christ in the text composition . Brahms did not elaborate on it and merely replied that he had dispensed with these references "with all knowledge and will". Since the composer's sacred works do not have a liturgical connection and were not composed on behalf of the church , they are inherent in the transverse nature of autonomous art, which became increasingly important in the 19th century in the course of secularization . Through Robert Schumann's exuberant article Neue Bahnen , which was published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik on October 25, 1853, Brahms was confronted very early on with what was, as it were, art-religious expectations and pushed into the role of the musical messiah . He himself opposed the religious exaltation of art and in this context used the term human work in relation to Clara Schumann . In the field of tension between liberalism and political Catholicism , represented in Vienna by the anti-Semite Albert Wiesinger , for example , he was assigned to the liberal camp. Brahms himself admitted that he could not “get rid of the inner theologian”, but on the other hand characterized his text selection as heretical.

literature

  • Jan Brachmann: Brahms between religion and art . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02233-2 , pp. 128-133.
  • Urs Fässler: Rebellion and Resignation. Brahms and Reger's musical confrontation with death . In: Martin Meyer (Ed.): Brahms studies. Volume 9. Johannes Brahms Society, Hamburg 1992, ISSN  0341-941X , pp. 9-16.
  • Michael Heinemann : Two motets for mixed choir a cappella op. 74. In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms-Handbuch. Metzler, Weimar 2009, pp. 309-311.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from Michael Heinemann: Two motets for mixed choir a cappella, Op. 74 . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, p. 309.
  2. a b c Michael Heinemann: Two motets for mixed choir a cappella op.74 . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, p. 310.
  3. Urs Fässler: Rebellion and Resignation. Brahms and Reger's musical confrontation with death . In: Martin Meyer (Ed.): Brahms studies. Volume 9. Johannes Brahms Society, Hamburg 1992, p. 13
  4. Urs Fässler: Rebellion and Resignation. Brahms and Reger's musical confrontation with death . In: Martin Meyer (Ed.): Brahms studies. Volume 9. Johannes Brahms Society, Hamburg 1992, p. 14.
  5. a b Michael Heinemann: Two motets for mixed choir a cappella op.74 . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, p. 311.
  6. Urs Fässler: Rebellion and Resignation. Brahms and Reger's musical confrontation with death . In: Martin Meyer (Ed.): Brahms studies. Volume 9. Johannes Brahms Society, Hamburg 1992, p. 9.
  7. Urs Fässler: Rebellion and Resignation. Brahms and Reger's musical confrontation with death . In: Martin Meyer (Ed.): Brahms studies. Volume 9. Johannes Brahms Society, Hamburg 1992, p. 15.
  8. a b quotation from Jan Brachmann: Brahms between religion and art . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, p. 129.
  9. Jan Brachmann: Brahms between religion and art . In: Wolfgang Sandberger (Ed.): Brahms Handbook. Metzler, Weimar 2009, p. 129.