Bedtime Stories About Brahms's Lullaby (Wiegenlied)
The Backstory

From grand choirs to tiny cradles

In the spring of 1868, I was thirty-five years old and finally enjoying a huge triumph after the premiere of A German Requiem in Bremen. By July, I was staying in Bonn and preparing to settle down permanently in Vienna. Instead of immediately starting another massive work for a full choir, I ended up writing a tiny song for a solo voice and piano. Going from a grand concert hall to the quietest corner of a nursery was quite a change of pace, like trading in a heavy winter coat for a pair of house slippers.

Old memories from Hamburg

The reason I sat down to write my Lullaby (Wiegenlied) was a happy piece of news from Vienna. My dear friends Arthur and Bertha Faber had just welcomed their second son, a little boy named Hans Faber. I had known and admired Bertha since her younger days, back when her name was Bertha Porubsky and she sang in my women's choir in Hamburg. Whether my youthful fondness for her back then was a serious romance or just a lighthearted infatuation is something nobody knows for sure anymore, though I certainly never forgot her.

A musical inside joke

In those early days, Bertha used to sing me a charming Austrian folk-style waltz duet by Alexander Baumann called S'is anderscht. When I put together this musical baby gift for her family, I decided to weave that old memory right into the piano part. I shaped the off-beat accompaniment in three-quarter time so it acts as a hidden counter-melody to the very tune she used to sing to me. It was my way of wrapping a private joke for the mother inside a bedtime song for the baby.

Keeping the secret on paper

Since I wrote the piece out of friendship rather than for a paid commission, it felt much more like a personal letter than an official project. Still, when I decided to include it as the fourth song in my five-song collection Fünf Lieder, Op. 49, I wanted to keep our connection somewhat discreet. On the printed score, I simply placed the dedication An B. F. in Wien at the top of the page. Anyone in our circle knew right away that those initials belonged to Bertha in Vienna, while the rest of the world was left to mind its own business.

Borrowing a bedtime poem

For the words of that first verse, I turned to a famous collection of traditional German folk poetry called Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which had been compiled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. Those opening lines, Guten Abend, gut' Nacht, were already familiar and comforting, like a favorite blanket that has been washed a hundred times. I set the poem in the warm key of E-flat major and wrote Zart bewegt at the top of the score, asking the performers to keep the music gently moving. When my publisher N. Simrock first brought the song out in Berlin in November 1868, that single folk verse was the entire piece.

Giving the song a second wind

People often assume that all the words you hear today come from old folk tradition, but that is actually not the case. After that first one-verse edition came out, I decided the song was over a little too quickly and needed a second stanza. I added another verse that also begins with Guten Abend, gut' Nacht, which had been written back in 1849 by Georg Scherer. Because the song repeats the exact same music for each verse, sliding those new lines about guardian angels underneath my melody was effortless.

Trying to stay awake in the concert hall

Even though I meant the song for a quiet home in Vienna, it was not long before it found its way onto the public stage. The first public performance took place in Vienna in December 1869, right in the middle of the winter concert season. The singer Luise Dustmann took care of the vocal part while my close friend Clara Schumann sat at the piano. Asking a room full of nicely dressed concertgoers to listen to a cradle song without nodding off in their chairs was a bold experiment, yet the audience loved every note.

A tune for the naughty children

Before I knew it, the little gift I had put together in Bonn took on a life of its own and became a runaway success. My publisher Simrock happily cashed in on the craze by printing all sorts of instrumental arrangements so people could play the tune on whatever instrument they had in the parlor. He put out so many different versions that I had to laugh at the sheer mountain of sheet music. I even dryly joked that he ought to publish a few arrangements in minor keys just for when the children were being naughty.

A bachelor in every nursery

Today, English speakers usually call the piece Brahms's Lullaby or Cradle Song, or simply know it by the translated opening words, Good evening, good night. Because my name is permanently attached to the most famous bedtime tune in the world, some people naturally assume I wrote it to rock my own little ones to sleep. In truth, I remained a lifelong bachelor and never had any children of my own. It is a funny twist of fate that a man who lived alone ended up becoming a nightly houseguest in millions of family bedrooms.

From grand pianos to plastic mobiles

Long after my time, other musicians kept finding new ways to dress up this simple melody. In 1922, Percy Grainger turned it into a rich solo piano piece for his collection Free Settings of Favorite Melodies, and Frank Sinatra even sang it in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh. Most of the time, though, you will hear it chiming out of wind-up music boxes and spinning baby mobiles in every corner of the globe. Of all the grand works I sweated over during my life, the tune that made me truly immortal is the one people play when they want everyone in the room to stop listening and go to sleep.