Commentators from Brahms's century and our own have largely interpreted Schumann's prophetic remark about the ‘powers amassed in the orchestra and chorus’, on which Brahms should draw, as a reference to the Beethovenian symphonic tradition at mid-century and, specifically, the challenges posed by the choral finale of Beethoven's Ninth. Robert Schumann had certainly led his readers in that direction when, earlier in ‘Neue Bahnen’ (‘New Paths’), he refers to sonatas that were ‘veiled symphonies’ among those pieces the twenty-year-old Brahms played for Clara and himself in October of 1853. Nevertheless, it is likely that Brahms and his contemporaries understood Schumann's comment to refer at least as much to orchestrally accompanied choral music as to choral symphonies or symphonic music more generally. Schumann, after all, produced many of his large choral works during the last decade of his life, by which time his own style had veered decisively towards Mendelssohn's more traditional legacy. And when Brahms did finally establish himself as a major force on the German music scene in 1868 he did so with a major choral work of his own, Ein deutsches Requiem Op. 45, the largest piece he was ever to compose.

Given the tremendous success of that work and the various shorter works for chorus and orchestra that followed around 1870 (Alto Rhapsody Op. 53, Schicksalslied Op. 54, Triumphlied Op. 55), it is easy to lose sight of the fact that by 1868 Brahms had already produced a large number of choral works of more modest proportions and that he continued to compose choral music of all types for the next two decades. And whereas Brahms’s status as a composer of choral music is much acknowledged in the choral world, his signficance in this area among musicians at large has been overshadowed by his reputation as a symphonist and chamber music composer.