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During and after the Second World War, the Dresdner Kreuzchor frequently performed Brahms’s choral mourning works in memorial services. Brahms drew on Lutheran mourning customs in the composition of his German Requiem, though the work had circulated in increasingly secular contexts in the years since. The Dresdner Kreuzchor repositioned Brahms’s Requiem as part of Lutheran burial culture, using these customs to provide emotional solace both during the war and after their city was firebombed in February 1945. Brahms’s Requiem also influenced new choral memorial works within the Kreuzchor community. This included a mourning motet and a Requiem by Rudolf Mauersberger, the cantor of the Dresdner Kreuzchor from 1930 to 1971. By turning to Brahms in both composition and performance, members of Dresden’s oldest musical institutions maintained their nation’s cultural heritage, expressed their personal grief about the firebombing, and avoided verbally articulating guilt about their involvement in the Third Reich. |
