Shortly after Johannes Brahms met the Schumanns in 1853, Robert Schumann published an article in an influential German music magazine announcing the arrival of a composer to watch:  

Many a new significant talent has appeared on the scene; a new force in music seemed imminent, as witnessed by many aspiring artists of recent times, even though their work is known to a rather narrow circle only. I felt that in following the progress of these select ones with the keenest of interest, that one day there must suddenly emerge the one who would be chosen to express the most exalted spirit of the times in an ideal manner, one who would not bring us mastery in gradual stages but who, like Minerva, would spring fully armed from the head of Jove. And he has arrived—a youth at whose cradle the graces and heroes of old stood guard. His name is Johannes Brahms.  

Brahms was doubtless flattered by Schumann's characterization. Still, he was also concerned: “The public praise that you have deigned to bestow upon me will have so greatly increased the expectations of the musical world regarding my work that I do not know how I shall manage to do even approximate justice to it,” he wrote to Schumann shortly after the article's publication. “You will readily understand that I am straining every nerve to bring as little disgrace as possible on your name.”  

Given Schumann’s profound influence on Brahms, personally and professionally, it is no surprise that his death in 1856 was profoundly upsetting. As a monument to his mentor, Brahms began realizing one of Schumann’s ideas—a Requiem based on German text. Although his personal views on religion were highly complex, Brahms compiled the text of the work, basing it not on the Latin Mass (as is Mozart’s Requiem) but rather on excerpts from the Old and New Testaments of Martin Luther’s German vernacular translation of the Bible. The resulting work—much more like an oratorio than any traditional Requiem—had a profoundly personal meaning for Brahms. After completing the text, Brahms stopped work on the project. In 1865, however, the death of Brahms’s mother—to whom he was extremely close—prompted him to resume work on the Requiem. The first performance was given in the Bremen Cathedral on Good Friday, April 10, 1868, with Brahms himself conducting. The composer subsequently added a seventh section as an homage to his mother—a portion for soprano entitled, “Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" (You now have sadness). After these final alterations, the complete Requiem was presented in 1869 at the inaugural concert at Leipzig's Gewandhaus concert hall. It was an immediate success—and over the next ten years, was performed in German-speaking countries over a hundred times. 

Brahms’s first work for chorus and orchestra, A German Requiem, in some ways served as a study in orchestration; the first movement completely omits violins, and the piece also uses harp, an instrument rare in Brahms’s music. Although Brahms composed the Requiem in stages, its form is virtually symmetrical: its first and seventh movements—conveying blessings upon mourners and the dead—have similar texts and end similarly. The second and sixth movements are simultaneously darker in mood and bolder in statement, with minor key openings culminating in grand major-mode statements. The meditative third and fifth movements feature soloists—a baritone in the third and a soprano in the sixth. The heart of the work is also the shortest, the rhapsodically tranquil chorus known popularly as “How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place.”  

Predating all of his symphonies, A German Requiem was the first work for which Brahms received universal approbation. It profoundly affected its earliest listeners; after seeing the completed score, Clara Schumann wrote, “I am completely filled with your Requiem, it…takes hold of a person’s whole being like very little else.” Brahms must have been pleased, as he intended the work not as a prayer for the dead but as a comfort for the living—a work for everyone. As he once wrote, “As for the title, I must admit I should like to leave out the word ‘German’ and refer instead to ‘Humanity.’”