Karl Simrock (1802 Bonn – 1876 Bonn)

Summary

‘Auf dem See’ Op. 59 no. 2 (comp. spring 1873, publ. Dec. 1873)

‘An den Mond’ Op. 71 no. 2 (comp. March 1877, publ. July–Aug. 1877)

BRAHMS'S GENERATION was familiar with the work of the distinguished folksong scholar Karl Simrock, which included folk poetry, proverbs, sagas, religious texts and poems for children, and was as popular as Uhland's. It is therefore unsurprising that a seam of Simrock's work runs throughout Brahms's life. In a handwritten catalogue of music and books, probably compiled in March–April 1856, Brahms noted that he owned the three volumes of Simrock's 1843–4 reworking of the Nibelung legends, the Heldenbuch. Brahms's collection of proverbs, compiled in March 1855, contains several which probably stem from Simrock's collection of German proverbs, Die deutschen Sprichworter. Brahms's folk poetry sources cannot be considered here, but he may have found the Rhenish text ‘Soll sich der Mond’ for his Op. 14 no. 1 in Simrock's 1851 Die deutschen Volkslieder. For a number of years, he also believed the first verse of his ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4 came from Simrock's Deutsches Kinderbuch, although he later corrected this when he realised that the poem was unattributed and actually from his favoured Arnim–Brentano collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Widmann also recommended Simrock as a potential source of opera libretti to their mutual friend the violinist Friedrich Hegar in 1867, and might have done the same for Brahms. In 1878, Brahms turned again to Simrock, this time his 1850 Lauda Sion, a collection of religious texts in German and Latin, in search of a translation in connection with his Motets Op. 74. Finally, there was a personal link: the poet was also the uncle of Brahms's publisher, general factotum and friend Fritz Simrock, and the family publishing firm only relocated from Bonn to Berlin in 1870.

Brahms loved Simrock's city, Bonn, and the folksongs of the Rhine. It therefore is a mystery why he did not try to establish a friendship with Simrock. The evidence that Brahms met Simrock at all is slender. Opportunities were not lacking. Brahms made his first brief visit to Bonn when he came to see the Schumanns in Düsseldorf in September 1853, having visited Hoffmann shortly before.