Most recent scholars imply that the first critiques of the Requiem support their interpretation of the text as valid for all faiths. A thorough inspection of the literature through the composer's lifetime—almost thirty years of reviews and essays—proves otherwise. Indeed, the first commentators on the Requiem consistently read and heard it as a piece upholding common Christian beliefs. Testimony to the contrary is meager, unconvincing, or misunderstood. In this chapter I survey a wide range of early assessments of the Requiem text (evaluations of the music appear in chapter 5) written by anonymous journalists, significant critics, distinguished musicologists, and Protestant theologians. Several of them were friends of Brahms and early supporters of his music. Most writings clearly assume a Christian reading of the text, but those examined here make explicit pronouncements to that effect. Time and again these authors refer to distinctive Christian themes in the work as discussed in the previous chapter, including redemption, resurrection, praise of the creator, and heavenly blessedness. Remarkably, except for some of the performance reviews, most of the sources cited here have appeared in various bibliographies or studies about Brahms; therefore, they are not unknown, but they have not been given an adequate hearing. Normally a few well-chosen examples would be sufficient to corroborate a particular claim, but a larger selection will be presented here because of the revisionist nature of my argument. Only the reader who becomes convinced that this was the prevailing view of the work may begin to murmur about the profusion of evidence. Here I invoke the words of the eighteenth-century music theorist and composer Johann Mattheson as he provided numerous scriptural passages as proof for heavenly music to those who denied its existence: “Therefore it is necessary, where possible, to open their understanding with still more passages … in order that no one may complain that not enough was told him about this.”

When examining early reactions to the Requiem, it is important to acknowledge that not everyone's opinion must be valued or trusted equally. For example, a zealous follower of Wagner, under the spell of the music of the future, will more than likely find something to critique in the works of Brahms.