He had a different intention; he wanted to create a “human Requiem.” It should not be a German or even Protestant counterpart to the Latin Requiem, but stand above all religions, confessions, and worldviews. Brahms attempts to find a basic statement about suffering, death, and resurrection that has validity for all people.

The texts are striking for avoiding altogether the notion of redemption through Christ, who is not mentioned at all. The religious sentiment is thus more universal—Brahms said it could be called a “human” requiem—than denominational.

The language is theistic, but at no point … is it explicitly Christian (any more than are Brahms's other vocal works to biblical compilationtexts). It was not the first requiem in German … but it was the first in which a composer had selected and shaped his text, for essentially personal resonances, to speak to a contemporary audience in a shared tongue, transcending the constraints of ritual: a prophetic sermon from individual experience, with universal application.

The redemptive death and resurrection of Christ, the central beliefs of Christianity, especially in regard to the deceased, indeed even the very name of Christ remain unmentioned, and we know that this was not done unintentionally.

Brahms … was a humanist and an agnostic, and his requiem was going to express that… . He fashioned an inwardly spiritual work, full of echoes of religious music going back hundreds of years, yet there is no bowing to the altar or smell of incense in it. Even if the words come from the Bible, this was his response to death as a secular, skeptical, modern man.