Brahms’s Lullaby

Where it comes from

Johannes Brahms wrote this cradle song in 1868 for Bertha Faber, a friend from his years in Hamburg, when her second son was born. Years before, she used to sing him an old Viennese song, and he wrote his lullaby so that it would fit together with that tune, like a secret second melody. When it was printed later that year, as No. 4 of his Five Songs, Op. 49, it carried a little dedication: “To B. F. in Vienna”.

Brahms took his words from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), a famous collection of German folk poems, where this little verse was printed in 1808. The German begins:

Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht, Mit Rosen bedacht

which means “Good evening, good night, covered with roses”. The first printing had just that one verse. A second verse, about little angels keeping watch, was added later. It comes from a poem by Georg Scherer, and begins “Guten Abend, gut’ Nacht, von Englein bewacht” (“watched over by angels”).

There are lots of English versions. These words were in print by the 1890s, in London concert programmes and in American books of lullabies, but never with a translator’s name: the book they’re taken from just says “From the German”. They follow the German closely, except that the German bed is decked with carnations, not lilies.

The tune in the player above is Brahms’s melody from an early printing by his publisher, Simrock, which you can see on IMSLP, the free library of sheet music.

Old words

• bedight: decorated, dressed up.
• bested: an old word meaning supplied with, so the bed is set all about with lilies.
• wee: little.
• thee, thy, thou shalt: you, your, you will.
• blest: blessed.
• harms: some old books print “harm”, which is a little easier to sing.

How to sing it

• Brahms repeats the last two lines of each verse, as you’ll hear in the tune above: “Lay thee down now and rest, may thy slumber be blest” comes round again before the end.
• It’s in three time, like a slow waltz. Sway on the first beat of every bar.
• Sing “Thy daddy’s delight”, or any name you like, in the second verse.