Joseph von Eichendorff (1788 Lubowitz, Upper Silesia – 1857 Neiße, Upper Silesia)

Summary

‘In der Fremde’ Op. 3 no. 5 (comp. Nov. 1852, publ. Dec. 1853)

‘Lied’ Op. 3 no. 6 (‘Lindes Rauschen in den Wipfeln’) (comp. Dec. 1852, publ. Dec. 1853)

‘Parole’ Op. 7 no. 2 (comp. Nov. 1852, publ. Nov. 1854)

‘Anklänge’ Op. 7 no. 3 (comp. March 1853, publ. Nov. 1854)

‘Mondnacht’ WoO 21 (comp. by Nov. 1853, publ. 1854)

Female choir acc. horns and harp:

‘Der Gärtner’ Op. 17 no. 3 (comp. Feb. 1860, publ. Jan. 1861)

Accompanied duet for alto/baritone:

‘Die Nonne und der Ritter’ Op. 28 no. 1 (comp. Nov. 1860, publ. Dec. 1863)

Accompanied female choir:

‘Der Bräutigam’ Op. 44 no. 2 (comp. Feb. 1860, publ. Oct. 1866)

‘Vom Strande’ Op. 69 no. 6 (comp. March 1877, publ. July–Aug. 1877)

Accompanied 6-part choir:

Op. 93b ‘Tafellied’ (comp. probably summer 1884, publ. Jan. 1885)

Female voices:

THE DATES OF BRAHMS'S Eichendorff settings imply that his interest in the poet peaked in his youth, alongside his Romantic leanings. Hedwig von Holstein, who met Brahms in December 1853, noted in her diary that both their favourite poets were Jean Paul and Eichendorff. Certainly the Schatzkastlein is littered with Eichendorff quotations. Many of these are incipits Schumann had used in editions of the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, but Brahms's copy of Eichendorff's 1843 Gedichte also bears signs of repeated reading. However, his poetry notebooks testify to a continuing interest; the notebooks start from 1877 and include many more Eichendorff texts. We cannot know how many settings he destroyed in his lifetime; but in 1885, he declared to Kalbeck that he had ‘composed all of Eichendorff’.

Eichendorff was possibly the most beloved Romantic poet of Brahms's generation. Well after the appeal of other Romantics had faded, readers delighted in his prose and composers found music in his poetry. Even the Realist vanguard admired Eichendorff: Storm was influenced by the novel Dichter und ihre Gesellen; and the poem ‘Wohin ich geh und schaue’ was anthologised by Fontane in his Deutsches Dichter-Album, to name but two examples. Eichendorff's lyric poetry drew on an enormously significant clutch of Romantic ideas to conjure up an idealised German empire. Unfortunately, the most recent English biography dates from 1972 and contains such lines as: ‘Let us remember that translations, like women, are either beautiful or faithful’. In other words, Eichendorff remains familiar but vague, refracted for musicians through works like Schumann's Eichendorff-Liederkreis Op. 39.