1. To Accept Death as Part of Life

When Grandpa passed away, the family took out the battery from the clock, and sat at the table in front of it for twenty-four hours until they restarted it. To me, it was a gesture that acknowledged the fact that our lives are in time, and thus finite: Living for dozens of years, we take time for granted, for both the start and the end seem far away. Only at moments like this are we reminded.

In the twenty-four hours, they cried, and there was one moment I wondered that people have been dying for thousands of years, and how come they still cannot come to terms with it. Then I realized such crying, instead of a thousand-year-old inability to come to terms, is in fact an act of coming to terms. After all, they restarted the clock after twenty-four hours, and they would laugh someday not too long after, and the laughter would be as real as the tears.

 

The first movement of the German Requiem brought this train of thought back to me. The music started in low pitch without the violin entering, as if coming from somewhere far and peaceful. Then the chorus came in:

“Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
They who sow in tears
shall reap in joy.
They go forth and weep,
and carry precious seed,
and come again with joy,
and bring their sheaves with them.”

 

The chorus sang calmly without outbursts of emotions, like a realistic painting. It sang solemnly, indicating that it was a proclamation addressing all humans, as opposed to a personal diary only about one sorrow man. With such calmness and solemnity, Brahms depicts the norms of humans: We accept death.

The mourning is the first step: With the display of sorrow, we accept the fact that we have sorrow. Then we weave the sorrow into our everyday lives: By sowing with tears, we announce that the sorrow is no longer something above life, but something in life, and of life. We live with it in our daily lives, make crying as normal as drinking the breakfast tea.

 

2. To Understand the Weight of Life Through Death

But why can we accept death?

The second movement started with a grave tone, with the bass part striking a heavy note every few beats. Following such tone, the first two sentences seemed to be offering a provisional, and rather grim answer to the question.

“For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man
is like flower of the field.
The grass withers and the flower
falls.”

Our lives are like grass and flower, ephemeral and insignificant. But moreover, our glories are too, the glories that we think are bigger than us and will live beyond us. Now, when life seems less luring, death becomes less despairing.

But is it not absurd to think this way? To escape the pain of death, devalue the meaning of life. Within the dichotomy between life and death, it is hard to think of a way out of the paradox: How can we deal with death, while still uphold life?

 

3. To Search for Something Beyond

The chorus suddenly turned bright and light, and went on to sing:

“So be patient, dear brothers,
until the coming of the Lord.
See how the farmer waits
For the precious fruit of the earth,
and is patient for it
until he receives the spring rains
and the autumn rains.”

After that, the previous paragraph about grass and flower was repeated, but this time with great strength and power, and with a new sentence added as if it were an epiphany:

“But the word of the Lord endures forever.”

 

So this is the way out of it.

We sure are ephemeral and insignificant, but there is something enduring and profound, something beyond us, and beyond time. Here, a hope is provided because the dichotomy is broken: Death is not necessarily the deprivation of life, but instead could be the elevation of life.

With such hope, the chorus went on lightheartedly, celebrating the prospect that the redeemed shall return, and all would be in joy.

 

4. To Connect with the Lord

The baritone started the third movement on his own, and the accompany turned to a simple melody, as if the collective celebration ended, and the man went back to his home, and started a private conversation.

The conversation, unsurprisingly, was with the Lord:

“Lord, let me know,
that I must have an end,
that my life has a term,
and that I must pass on.”

 

Then the chorus joined, as though revealing that while the conversation is private, between a man and the Lord, it is by no means unique: It is a conversation that all men who have contemplated about life and death might have. After acknowledging life is short, and the accumulation of wealth is meaningless, the chorus sang:

“Now, Lord, how shall I find comfort?
I hope in you.”

This conversation with the Lord reminds us that while the Lord is infinite, it does not automatically give us humans the capacity to transcend our lives. A connection needs to be made, and here the man, and all people were seeking such connection.

They believed they indeed can make the connection and find comfort in the Lord, through being just:

“The souls of the righteous are
in the hands of God,
and no torment shall touch them.”

Then the idyllic fourth movement began, the chorus went on to express the joy that “my body and soul rejoice in the living God,” and praised the Lord.

 

5. To Spread the Words

The music did not stop although the revelation had been reached: Through connecting with the Lord, we can reconcile life and death.

The soprano started the fifth movement with a personal address:

“You now have sorrow;
but I will see you again
and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no man shall take
from you.”

 

The chorus followed:

“I will comfort you
as one whom a mother comforts.
Look on me: for a short time
I have sorrow and labor,
And have found great comfort.”

This movement turned a personal revelation into something of a community, or even something along generations: Mothers comfort their children, and those who have been through sorrow comfort those with new wounds. They will tell each other how God can help them, just like the baritone did with great conviction in the sixth movement:

“The trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.”

The chorus went on to praise the Lord together following the baritone, which I saw as a sign that the people shall be convinced by those who spread around the words of the Lord.

 

Such is the journey that Brahms takes us through with the German Requiem, an inquiry into death, and consequently, into life. Symphony serves as a perfect media to represent such process.

On the one hand, music, like our thinking, is time-based. We do not arrive at the conclusion at once, but first come in contact with a question, feel confused, search for the answer in perplexity, and then find the answer. One of the most dramatic moments in music is also one of the most dramatic moments in thinking: As the chorus turned from grim to lighthearted, we the thinkers, too, at the seemingly dead end, flew above and found meaning in life while not fearing death.

On the other hand, symphony as a cooperative process also parallels the fact that people interact with one another when they think about the issue of life and death. We comfort one another, and spreading the words of the Lord we help one another to face the difficult and necessary topic. We are together in front of life and death as a human race, both in community with those in the same time with us, and passing the message along generations.