ABSTRACT

The earliest choral compositions by Brahms were two pieces he wrote for a small men’s chorus that he conducted on a summer holiday in 1847 (at age fourteen); one is said to have shown “a feeling for independent part writing.” 1 Until he was thirty years old, he wrote choral music primarily for the choirs he himself conducted—the court choir at Detmold (1857–59), the Hamburg Frauenchor (1859–62), and the Vienna Singakademie (1862–63). 2 Beginning with Ein deutsches Requiem (completed 1868–69), however, he appears to have produced choral works not on commission or for a choir of his own, but because he was stimulated by a text or an event. 3