The following musical “guide” (a nod to Kretzschmar's F ührer) to Ein deutsches Requiem is a collation of descriptions drawn from early reviews and discussions of the work, generally published before the composer's death in 1897. In keeping with the theme of this book, comments have been chosen that reveal how the listener understood the music to express the biblical text. The selections are especially poetic or musically insightful and attempt to verbalize the affect of the music. Technical musical observations are omitted here, even though they were occasionally addressed by these writers.

Importantly, these authors embrace the Requiem as a theological document and support my argument that it was natural for most early audience members to hear the work as an inspired and respectful setting of a completely biblical text. The statements below do not reflect just a mere reading of the scripture passages without the benefit of the score but rather constitute a theologically informed commentary motivated by the music itself. Thus these writers, identified earlier throughout this study, along with several unnamed authors of performance reviews, provide an alternative interpretation of the Requiem to those appearing in exhibit A. Although not every sentence quoted below is deeply theological, there are still no disavowals of the biblical content and no suggestions of a universal perspective within the writings of these authors. Notably, their words are as attentive to Brahms's music as Brahms's music is devoted to his text.

A list of the sources appears first; those in shortened format appear in complete form in the bibliography. Within the guide itself, the names of authors and cited page numbers are provided in parentheses after each of their quotations, or in the case of a performance review, the city is supplied and other identifying information as necessary. One exceptional source is the extensive set of program notes written for the second performance of the Requiem in Basel (March 24, 1869), with the author designated only as “C. B.” Occasional connecting phrases in brackets are mine.