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Written in the last year of his life, Johannes Brahms turned to the pipe organ - an instrument for which he had not written much previously - to explore writing in Baroque-style species counterpoint, using stylistic writing and structural forms which were prevalent in the Baroque era - in the century predating Bach. Brahms used these Baroque idioms, however, to create a full texture and chromatic language which allows the pipe organ to speak with a late Romantic voice and modern sensibility. These pieces do not look forward, as in the works of Reger, Karg-Elert and others - and yet create just as vivid an emotional mood as the other composers. Brahms uses church chorales here the same way he used biblical texts in his Requiem. Not so much to evoke an other-worldly sacred as to use these historically powerful forms to shed light on our present human condition and emotions. His' use of historical counterpoint and voice leading can sometimes cause misunderstandings about his music: His music is not a throwback to Baroque and Classical forms; rather it is a unique late Romantic humanistic statement expressed through the vivid colors which are captured through the compositional techniques of the late Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras.