“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” – as the opening words proclaim.

Rather than the classical perspective on the hereafter, Brahms in his German Requiem gives room for many human elements, such as pain, earthly mortality, hope and comfort.

A German Requiem is thus not the Latin Mass for the dead, as is customary in the Catholic tradition: this miscellany from the Old and New Testaments was translated into German by Luther, so that ordinary people could also understand what was being sung. Brahms carefully selected the texts, always with his goal in mind: to write a requiem for human beings.