'Nevertheless I wish to have the Requiem in my own cupboard again, so send....'[22]
To this note Dietrich returned no answer, and Brahms, becoming impatient, applied for information as to the whereabouts of his work to Joachim, who wrote back that it was in Reinthaler's keeping. Possibly Brahms may have been a little startled at finding that Dietrich, in his eager friendship, had put such an elastic interpretation upon the mention of the Bremen director quoted in our last chapter as to pass over the injunction not to part with the manuscript; but however this may be, he cannot but have been gratified at finding, as the result, that the musician of his own selection had been so impressed by the work as to wish to produce it at the earliest appropriate opportunity in the cathedral of Bremen. It is known to some of Reinthaler's old friends that he suggested the enlargement of the work to the dimensions of an oratorio. That Brahms did not entertain the proposal is matter of history.
The first performance of the Requiem, as originally completed, to be given under Brahms' direction in Bremen Cathedral, was fixed for Good Friday, April 10, 1868. Meanwhile the composer's engagements kept him in Austria. The first three numbers of the new work were to be produced under Herbeck at the Gesellschaft concert of December 1, and a tour arranged with Joachim for the ante-Christmas concert-season included concerts in Vienna, Budapest, and various provincial towns. The journey, which opened at Vienna on November 9, was triumphantly successful. Joachim performed the great solos of his répertoire by Bach, Tartini, and Spohr, and shorter pieces by Schumann and Paganini, with all of which concert-goers are now familiar, appearing also on his own account in several great orchestral concerts. Brahms played works by Bach, Schumann, Schubert, and some of his own compositions. Together the concert-givers were heard in several of Beethoven's duet Sonatas, Schubert's Fantasia, Op. 159, and Rondo Brilliant, Op. 70, etc.
'When Brahms and Joachim play Beethoven, Bach, Schubert together, the conceptions are like living tone pictures,' says Billroth, who, called to Vienna about a year after his first acquaintance with Brahms at Zürich and settled there for good, had the delight of receiving and hearing his two great artist friends at his house several times during the two months of Joachim's stay.
The Gesellschaft concert of December 1 was devoted to the memory of Schubert, and the three first numbers of the German Requiem formed an appropriate first portion of a programme of which the second half consisted of a selection from Schubert's music to 'Rosamund,' given for the first time in a concert-room. The choruses were, of course, sung by the Singverein, and Dr. Pänzer, of the imperial chapel, was responsible for the baritone solo of the Requiem.
The performance of Brahms' movements did not result in a success, though the two first were received with some tokens of approval. At the conclusion of the third an extraordinary scene took place. The now celebrated pedal point,[23] on which the last section of this number is constructed, produced—partly owing to a mistake of the drummer, who drowned the chorus by playing the famous 'D' forte throughout—a condition of nervous tension in a portion of the audience, a longing to be relieved from the monotony of the one dominating sound; and when the composer appeared on the platform in answer to the calls of some of his hearers, unmistakable demonstrations of hostility mingled with the plaudits. It may, indeed, be confidently surmised, and cannot appear surprising, that but few even of those who supported him on this occasion had any clear conception either of the meaning or importance of his work. To Hanslick it appeared
'one of the ripest fruits in the domain of sacred music, developed out of the style of Beethoven's late works.... The harmonic and contrapuntal art learnt by Brahms in the school of Bach, and inspired by him with the living breath of the present, is almost forgotten in the expression of touching lament, increasing to the annihilating death-shudder.'
Of its reception he says:
'It is intelligible that a composition so difficult to understand, and which deals only with ideas of death, is not adapted for popular success and that it does not entirely answer to the demands of a great public. We should have supposed, however, that a presentiment of the greatness and seriousness of the work would have suggested itself even to those who do not like it and would have won their respect. This seems not to have been the case with half a dozen gray-haired fanatics of the old school, who had the rudeness to greet the applauding majority and the composer, as he appeared, with prolonged hissing—a requiem on the decorum and good manners of a Vienna concert-room which astonishes and grieves us.'