Detlev von Liliencron (1844 Kiel – 1909 Alt-Rahlstedt, Hamburg)

Summary

‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ Op. 105 no. 4 (comp.? 1888, publ. Oct. 1888)

‘Maienkätzchen’ Op. 107 no. 4 (comp. after summer 1886, publ. Oct. 1888)

BRAHMS WAS LINKED to Detlev von Liliencron through his uncle Rochus von Liliencron, and through Groth. Rochus von Liliencron, whom Brahms met in 1868, was the first (and initially sole) editor of the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, the vast German biographical encyclopaedia. He was prodigiously learned, familiar with German and Nordic literature and art, a good pianist, and an expert in medieval folksong and sacred songs. They met again in Munich in 1873. But Groth was the more significant connection; Liliencron admired Groth's Quickborn poems, and Groth in turn penned a positive review of Liliencron's Adjutantenritte poems in 1883. In that year, Liliencron sent Adjutantenritte to Brahms, resulting in the two settings. Brahms later acquired other works, including Eine Sommerschlacht (1887) and the 1889 Gedichte, both of which he read with care and interest, although no more music resulted.

The Adjutantenritte poems differ from Brahms's more usual fare. Based on Liliencron's military experiences in the 1870–1 Franco-Prussian war, the collection rejects Romantic idealisation in favour of a Realist stance which abandoned the elevated tone associated with lyric poetry. Not everyone admired it; one commentator observed that Liliencron lacked transcendence. Brahms's choice of ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ confounded expectations; Kalbeck felt that only Brahms's setting redeemed the verses. Billroth also ascribed all the credit to Brahms, judging from a letter of 16 October 1888:

At the moment, ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ has gripped me the most profoundly. The whole horrifying, seriously beautiful shiver which grips me in the second chorus of your Requiem and the Gesang der Parzen, also ripples through me with this song. Only you know how to capture the eternal in the smallest forms so powerfully.

Within the volume, the poem is found among a large group of military poems and ballads with patriotic-religious associations, which might explain Billroth's mention of works like the Requiem and the Gesang der Parzen; it might also explain why Brahms incorporated into the song a quotation from the Lutheran chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’, the text of which laments Christ's sufferings and begs for comfort at the time of the singer's death.