Brahms. All organ works

“There is what one can still do with the old forms”
Richard Wagner

Even the Catholic Church was unable to eradicate the wish of Germans to participate in divine worship, performing hymns in their native language. This tradition, which has come down through the Middle Ages and the New Age, is alive in Germany even today: any self-respecting parishioner knows by heart the melodies and words to several dozen, perhaps even hundreds, of hymns that date back almost to Martin Luther. For German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, at that time using the melody of a hymn in one of his own works meant speaking with the public in a language it understood as behind every line of the music the listener’s memory would always be enriched by this or that religious dictum. Thus versions of choral melodies for organ in the Baroque age were analogies of sermons in which the composer exposed his own understanding of the ideas of Christian dogma. One and a half centuries after Baroque thinking – and along with it the culture of works for organ to choral themes – had lost its currency for most European composers, Johannes Brahms – one of the last German Romantics – was preparing to bid farewell to this world by composing his Choral Preludes for Organ, Op. 122. They were published posthumously and formed a record of a situation not entirely typical for the late 19^th century: the illustrious secular composer turned to the specifically ecclesiastical genre of choral revisions while his contemporaries were already rethinking the organ as an instrument for concert repertoire and almost orchestral timbre possibilities. Apropos, these eleven choral preludes are not Brahms’ only opus that is connected with Christian worship. With his excellent knowledge of Holy Scripture the composer wrote several spiritual vocal works that throw light on Brahms’ complex relationship with religion. The composer’s own ideas on the long-expected acquisition of spiritual bliss concerned Jesus Christ, the core figure of Christianity, and his redemptive sacrifice least of all. Moreover, as a son of his own age Brahms did not even believe in lie after death as such, but that consolation for grief and loss must be sought in worldly life, here and in the present. This beloved idea of Brahms that one should love all who suffer and comfort them here and now can also be heard in his famous Ein Deutsches Requiem and in the composer’s last “testament” – his preludes for organ to themes from Protestant hymns.
Marina Iovleva