Brahms wrote little music for chorus until he took up his first official position at Detmold, where part of his duties included conducting the choral society. Once he began composing choral music he never stopped. Although not published until 1864, Brahms' Psalm 13, Op. 27, was written during the summer of 1859, the year in which he founded a women's chorus in Hamburg. Manuscript evidence shows that an early version of Psalm 13 was composed for, and performed by, Brahms' Hamburg women's chorus. The published version was first performed in Hamburg, on September 19, 1864. Accompaniment by either organ or piano (requiring four hands) is mandatory; Brahms considered the strings optional, although he included them in the first Vienna performance of Psalm 13. In later years, Brahms would become much more particular about the tone color of his accompanimental ensembles.

Brahms' choral writing is derived from his study of early-Baroque contrapuntal technique, undertaken initially at the library of his native city of Hamburg and intensified after meeting the Schumanns at Düsseldorf. Thus, Brahms' choral works, especially his a cappella pieces, are more akin to examples from the early eighteenth century than those of the nineteenth. For instance, in the Geistliches Lied, Op. 30, we hear a double canon at the major ninth. Brahms' setting of Psalm 13, Op. 27, a much lengthier piece for three-voice female chorus with piano or organ accompaniment and strings ad libitum, is in a homophonic style.

The text of Psalm 13 is in two parts, in the first of which the plaintiff asks the Lord how long he will ignore him; in the second the plaintiff asks for the power to defeat his enemies. Brahms makes no distinction between these two sections, continuing from one to the other in the same harmony, the pattern of text presentation and motivic development.

Opening in a fashion reminiscent of Felix Mendelssohn's (1809-47) St. Paul, Brahms' Psalm 13 eventually confirms the key of G minor. Brahms employs predictable illustrative musical devices such as ending lines of text that are questions on harmonies other than the tonic. A predominant 6/4 meter lends a an arcane, Medieval flavor to the piece. The closing passage, "Ich will dem Herr singen, dass er so wohl an mir tut" ( I will sing of the Lord that he is good to me), receives the most extensive treatment in a section of its own, distinguished by its dotted half note rhythm and the constant affirmation of G major, the key in which the piece closes.

© All Music Guide