Below is a clip from Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, as conducted by Herbert von Karajan and sung by Kathleen Battle. Many of you will recognize this magnificent hall as none other than the Musikverein in Vienna, the capital of music.
Brahms, who became acquainted with German Lutheran church music as a boy under the tutelage of the pastor at the Michaeliskirche in Hamburg, constructed this Requiem on the model created by Heinrich Schuetz. In this format, the Requiem is not a liturgical composition, but rather a set of meditations on selected scriptural texts. Nevertheless, much, if not all of it, can be applied to Catholic worship in the Ordinary Form (or in the EF if it's a Low Mass) with little problem.
