Brahms's German Requiem was written as a tribute to his mother - and possibly his friend and fellow-composer Robert Schumann - and designed to comfort the grieving. the work is often assumed to be a nationalistic, Teutonic celebration. Yet this couldn't be further from the truth. "I confess, I should have gladly left out 'German' and substituted 'Human'", the composer once wrote. He compiled the text himself from both Old and New Testaments, and from the Apocrypha. It has little in common with the conventional Requiem Mass, and omits the horrors of the Last Judgement, and any final plea for mercy or prayers for the dead. Show less