Brahms' Lullaby

Brahms called it simply Wiegenlied, cradle song. It is the fourth of his Five Songs, Op. 49, which Simrock published in November 1868, a song for voice and piano marked Zart bewegt, tenderly moving. He wrote it for his friend Bertha Faber when her second son was born. The words come from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the German folk poetry collection, and the first edition printed only one verse.

There is a story in the tune, as Brahms's biographers tell it. He had been in love with Bertha Faber when she was young, and he built the melody so that it hints at a song she used to sing to him, hidden underneath as a counter-melody. He also based the music partly on S'Is Anderscht, a duet by Alexander Baumann published in the 1840s. The first public performance was in Vienna on December 22, 1869, sung by Luise Dustmann with Clara Schumann at the piano.

The page carries Brahms's voice part note for note, moved from E flat to G. Two small things differ from his print. Where Brahms writes a breath after the long notes in the first half, the page holds the note through, the way current printings do. The two grace notes he adds near the end are left out, as one current printing leaves them out, so the melody stays plain. The first half rocks between a long note and two short ones leading into the next. The second half climbs to the high g, falls away, and says its last line twice.

On a mandolin the thing to get right is the volume. A lullaby wants to be quiet, and a mandolin note dies fast, so the long notes need a soft, slow tremolo that starts gently and stays even to the end of the beat. Pick the short notes lightly and let them lead into the long ones. The dotted quarter at the top of the first bar sets the rocking rhythm, so give it its full length before the eighth note.