In the week following the events at the Boston Marathon there was a communal singing of the Brahms Requiem at MIT. Over 30 Boston choirs participated to raise money for One Fund Boston, a relief fund for the victims of the attack and to reflect on the events that have affected us all.

The Brahms Requiem was a requiem in title only. This piece is not a Catholic mass for the dead, it is a Lutheran service for the living.

Brahms cobbled his text together from passages of the Lutheran Bible and the Apocrypha. The first section of text he uses is, “Blessed those that mourn.”

Brahms started considering this idea of a requiem for the living after his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann, died. When Brahms’ mother died eight years later, he took up pen and worked on his Requiem for three years.

There are seven sections in the piece with the fourth piece serving as a fulcrum. This famous movement, How lovely is thy dwelling place, gently turns the piece toward the end.

The seventh movement is Blessed are the dead. Brahms ends his music in a manner which reconciles us to our mortal state.

Link to the webcast of the MIT concert.

http://webcast.mit.edu/i/institute/2012-2013/2013apr19/

Herbert Blomstedt leading a beautiful concert of the Brahms in Denmark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJelOS-fjrY

Eugene Ormandy leading the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in an english version of the Brahms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX68zUKmFvY