Eduard Mörike (1804 Ludwigsburg – 1875 Stuttgart)

Summary

‘An eine Äolsharfe’ Op. 19 no. 5 (comp. Sept. 1858, publ. March 1862)

‘Agnes’ Op. 59 no. 5 (comp. spring 1873, publ. Dec. 1873)

Accompanied duet for soprano/alto:

‘Die Schwestern’ Op. 61 no. 1 (comp. possibly by 1860, publ. Sept. 1874)

ONE MIGHT REASONABLY have expected more Mörike settings from Brahms. The Schumanns, Joachim and Stockhausen all knew him, and Clara Schumann and Stockhausen maintained their friendships with him right up to his death in 1875. Mörike's mastery of Classical poetic forms would also have appealed to Brahms; he shared this gift with Hölty, his older colleague Friedrich Hölderlin as well as Schiller and Goethe. Also, his musical interests were extensive. The small number of settings, therefore, suggests two things: a lack of affinity, and perhaps also some sense of confusion around Mörike's poetic achievement. Some regarded him as a master folk-poet, others as a superb Classicist; and in fact after 1847 Mörike wrote little lyric poetry apart from occasional works; from 1863 onwards, his poetry was generally directed at individuals from his social circle. One scholar has observed that his contemporaries associated him with a mere handful of works. His writings were not widely popularised through schoolbooks and anthologies. Kalbeck, despite his considerable literary knowledge, only mentioned Mörike in relation to Wolf's fifty-three settings. His quotation from a review of Wolf as the ‘rediscoverer’ of Mörike in the 1880s reveals much about waxing and waning of the poet's fortunes. Brahms typically left no comments.

From the age of twenty onwards, Brahms must have heard Mörike's name regularly, especially in Joachim's company. In 1853, Bettina von Arnim's daughter Gisela (with whom the violinist was in love) gave Joachim a copy of Mörike's poems. Mörike knew both her family and another powerful literary clan, the Grimms (see ‘Candidus’). On 12 August 1855, Joachim gave Brahms a copy of Mörike's popular fairy-tale, Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmannlein, with an inscription to read it on his journey through the poet's native Swabia. That Christmas, Joachim received more Mörike writings from Gisela von Arnim, and he thanked her for the ‘hours of blissful absorption in an armchair until late in the night on Christmas Eve’.