[...]... blank one The Organ in the Life of Brahms ntil fairly recent times, Brahms s organ works have been regarded by many as something of an anomaly In his biography of the composer (first published in Germany in ), Walter Niemann states that, with the exception of the Eleven Chorale Preludes, the organ works “are a side issue, of subordinate interest among the composer’s works Brahms never sounded the real... Grädener, director of the Hamburg Akademie chorus Wm A Little suggests that the church’s regular organist probably played for most of the service and that Brahms s role in the wedding music was limited to accompanying the chorus.45 But depending on the musical content of the rest of the ceremony, which may have comprised only a few chorales, it is not impossible that Brahms was indeed the only organist involved...  By this time, an organ part had been added to the full score, which had also been reworked in other respects The first published edition of the orchestral parts of the Requiem included an organ part “fully worked out by the composer.”66 From the opening bars (where the pedal doubles the contrabass in the repeated notes), the organ plays at least part of the time in all but the fifth movement, which... Chor of Berlin, soon added the Requiem to his chorus’s repertoire and also underscored the importance of the organ part He stated that an “instruction that  Background is apt to meet with lack of understanding is the Orgel ad libitum: it appears to be rather unimportant whether the organ is used or not According to a recollection of the publisher, the ad libitum was placed there because at the time the. .. was The Organ in the Life of Brahms  virtually completed (with the exception of the fifth movement) by  Although assumed by many sources to have been inspired by the death of Brahms s mother in , Max Kalbeck and others make a better case for the Requiem having been initially conceived in honor of Schumann Yet it is hard not to see the added fifth movement, at least, as a touching tribute to the. .. this church; the organ was probably involved in the accompaniment, and Brahms was presumably in attendance.33 Another Düsseldorf organ they might have encountered was the  Teschemacher organ in the Lutheran Church in the Bergerstrasse Tonally, both of these instruments were in the eighteenth-century Rhenish tradition, which, like that of Thuringia and Saxony, incorporated—along with the classical... Gavotte “in the style of Bach,” written in .29 This was indeed the first performance of any of Brahms s compositions in the British Isles, later to become a hotbed of Brahms appreciation Shortly after Clara’s return in July, Brahms played both the A Minor Prelude and Fugue and the A-flat Minor Fugue for her, but whether on the piano or on the organ is unknown Some writers have speculated that the Schumanns... Brahms played the organ, and after the ceremony he asked the ladies if they would like to sing some of the songs he had composed.”44 This was the  Background genesis of the Hamburger Frauenchor that Brahms directed for several years, and for which he wrote some of his earliest choral works What is unknown about this incident is whether Brahms played for the entire service or simply accompanied the chorus,... intentionally left blank Contents PART I: BACKGROUND The Organ in the Life of Brahms ONE 3 Bach, Counterpoint, and Chorales TWO THREE Brahms as Revisor 33 41 PART II: THE MUSIC FOUR FIVE The Early Works The Eleven Chorale Preludes SIX Interpretation APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C 53 77 121 Editions 139 The Organs in Brahms s World 142 Organ Transcriptions of Works by Brahms Notes 155 Bibliography 167 Discography... so much.”49 The Frauenchor seems to have had free use of the church and its organ, and Meier indicates that some of its members, including Mme Nordheim, one of the older singers who occasionally joined them, and even Brahms s sister Elise, took turns treading the bellows for the rehearsals.50 She also quotes Brahms as saying that he preferred the acoustics of St Peter’s Church to those of the larger . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" the organ music of johannes brahms This page intentionally left blank the organ music of johannes brahms Barbara Owen 1  1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes. prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Owen, Barbara. The organ music of Johannes Brahms / by Barbara Owen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical. sources of information, I am particularly in- debted to the excellent resources of the Music Division of the Mugar Library at Boston University, the Sibley Music Library of the Eastman School of Music, the