Notwithstanding the evidence already submitted, the most important hermeneutical guide to the Requiem for the informed listener is the music itself. As Jonathan Bellman contends, “for purposes of telling a story, delivering a message, or making a point, the choice of musical idiom has to be considered the most immediately striking and significant choice a composer can make.” Bellman asserts that “there was no ‘public-domain’ musical style over which [Brahms] had less than absolute command.” With a variety of styles under his authority, Brahms set his Requiem text sympathetically, convincingly, dramatically, and, above all, with an earnest devotion to sacred music traditions. Brahms is legendary as a student of the music of his German predecessors and for his dedication to sustaining and participating in that imposing heritage. To do so, he became, in the words of Charles Rosen, “the most learned composer in the history of music.” In examining what he calls Brahms's “allegiance to the tradition of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven,” J. Peter Burkholder explains: “Brahms's music embraces all he knew of previous European musical history within it, a summation that is both awesome in its scope and incomprehensible without an understanding of the past that is being evoked.” Indeed, just as an appreciation of the text of the Requiem is richer with knowledge of the Bible—its intertext—and its previous use by other composers, so does an appreciation of the work's musical message become more profound with a knowledge of the musical intertext of the Requiem, that is, the general musical traditions as well as individual musical works to which Brahms pays tribute in his work.

This chapter will consider the musical context of the Requiem as well as its appraisal by early writers. As throughout this study, the focus will be on the elements that encourage and validate a Christian interpretation of the work. After an opening section that evaluates general comments by early critics, Brahms's continuation of the German sacred music tradition will be examined in detail, primarily through his allusions to masterworks of his predecessors and his conscientious setting of the biblical text through traditional techniques.