AMD 3-- Callie Chappell

Guys, blast from the past!
This week, I listened to Brahms' Requiem. This was a very nostalgic experience for me because two years ago, I traveled to Germany with an international choir and performed this piece throughout Europe with a variety of German choirs. Although this was before I learned any German, I found the sound of the German language beautiful, especially for singing. This is a big reason why I chose to switch from French to starting German. It is commonly believed that Brahms wrote this Requiem for the death of his mother, and the cathartic air is especially apparent in the forth and sixth movements. My favorite movement is the fifth movement, where the baritone soloist sings "augenblick," meaning "in the blink of an eye." Ironically, this piece is written in the German equivalent of "old English," so I learned the German words for "thee" and "thou" before I learned words like "the" and "you." Additionally, I knew an odd collection of death-related words like "tot," "blumen" (obviously what grows from the ashes of dead!), and "Death, where is your sting? Where? Where?!" (Seriously, listen to the fifth movement). As you can guess, this collection of German vocabulary clearly endeared me to many German host families. The first family I stayed with actually thought I wanted to visit a cemetery because I was so excited that I saw a place labelled with a word that I knew. Finally, this experience really showed me the universality of language and music. It was amazing to see how the music and cross-lingual singing brought communities and nations together. In Germany, these lyrics are widely known. Many older Germans would sing along with us, or mouth the words, even if they were not in the performing choirs, because this Requiem is so integral to German culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAnUk6MxXQ0