(b Mohrungen, East Prussia, 25 Aug 1744; d Weimar, 18 Dec 1803). German man of letters, philosopher and theologian. Familiar from his earliest years with the Protestant songbooks (his father was a verger, Kantor and teacher), he was fond of music all his life. In his Königsberg student days he became acquainted with Kant and Hamann. To his friendship with the latter he owed his first introduction to the theory of the common roots of music and language. Hamann helped secure for Herder a post as teacher (and later as preacher) at Riga, where he met Müthel and became acquainted with Latvian folksong. In 1769 he undertook a journey by sea to France, meeting leading Parisian men of letters. In Germany he met Lessing, Claudius and (at Strasbourg in 1770) the young Goethe; this last must be accounted one of the most influential meetings between writers, giving rise as it did to a series of bold new undertakings for both. From 1771 until 1776 he was at Bückeburg, the court of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe, where his collaboration with J.C.F. Bach produced a series of important cantatas, oratorios and ‘dramas for music’. In 1776 he moved to Weimar, where against the taste of the time he strove to re-establish church music in its former integrity. In collaboration with the court Kapellmeister E.W. Wolf he wrote several festal cantatas. A journey to Italy in the company of Dalberg in 1788 gave him little satisfaction, and he spent the rest of his life prematurely old and out of sympathy with the spirit both of the excesses of the Sturm und Drang and also of rarefied Weimar Classicism.
Important as were many of Herder’s literary writings, he was still more significant for the ideas he introduced, especially to Goethe. He played a large role in the development of the studies of history, language, theology, philosophy and sociology. His conception of music not as an adornment but as one of the wellsprings of all culture and education deserves emphasis: ‘Through music our race was humanized; through music it will attain yet greater humanity’. Though he never worked out in detail his views on music, they are based on a wide knowledge of both the theory and practice of earlier generations and of his contemporaries. Especially in folksong (it was he who coined the term ‘Volkslied’) he achieved work of lasting value – not so much in his translations and re-creations of folksongs as in his recognition that the soul of a people is most readily perceived in its popular music, and that the qualities of lively impulsion (‘Sprünge und Würfe’) outweigh sophistication and stylistic perfection. The essays on Shakespeare and on the songs of ancient peoples that were included in the manifesto Von deutscher Art und Kunst (1773) were of epoch-making importance, and he followed this volume with collections of Volkslieder (1778–9) and various essays on music. These include ‘Über die Oper’, ‘Ob Malerei oder Tonkunst eine grössere Wirkung gewähre?’, ‘Cäcilie’, ‘Die Tonkunst: eine Rhapsodie’ and ‘Tanz und Melodrama’; music is the subject of a number of his poems; and apart from the oratorios, cantatas and allegorical and dramatic works he wrote for music, he translated Messiah (Handel being one of the earlier composers he most warmly admired).
Among those who set Herder’s lyrics are Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Neefe, Schubert, Richard Strauss and Weber. While despising much in contemporary German opera, he nevertheless conceived of a unified theatrical work in which poetry, music, action, décor and dance would become one. Gluck was the opera composer against whose achievements he measured all others, but Gluck did not accept Herder’s invitation to set his Brutus (it was actually set by J.C.F. Bach). Herder considered music to be a cosmic and natural force as well as the more conscious product of individual genius; reason could not account for it, just as in ancient poetry that quality he called aerugo (‘rust’) was a sign of age and naturalness, defying the analysis of the pedant yet immediately recognizable as a hallmark of true art.
FriedlaenderDL
R. Haym: Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken (Berlin, 1877–85, 2/1954)
B. Suphan, ed.: Herders sämmtliche Werke (Berlin, 1877–1913/R)
C. Redlich, ed.: Herders Volkslieder (Berlin, 1885)
K. Goedeke and others: Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, iv/1 (Dresden, 1891, 3/1916/R), 695–740
P. Levy: ‘Geschichte des Wortes Volkslied’, Acta germanica, vii/3 (1911), 3–14
E. Purdie, ed.: J.G. Herder: Von deutscher Art und Kunst (Oxford, 1924)
W. Nufer: Herders Ideen zur Verbindung von Poesie, Musik und Tanz (Berlin, 1929)
J. Müller-Blattau: Hamann und Herder in ihren Beziehungen zur Musik: mit einem Anhang ungedruckter Kant-Dichtungen und Liedmelodien aus Herders Nachlass (Königsberg, 1931)
B. von Wiese: Herder (Leipzig, 1939)
W. Anders: Herder und die deutsche Volkskunde der Gegenwart (diss., U. of Freiburg, 1941)
A. Gillies: Herder (Oxford, 1945)
A. Kleinau: Herders Volksliedbegriff (diss., U. of Marburg, 1947)
E. Keyser, ed.: Im Geiste Herders: gesammelte Aufsätze zum 150. Todestage J.G. Herders (Kitzingen, 1953) [with bibliography, 1916–53]
H.J. Moser: Die evangelische Kirchenmusik in Deutschland (Berlin, 1954)
R.T. Clark: Herder: his Life and Thought (Berkeley, 1955)
H. Strobach: ‘Zur Volksliedrezeption in der deutschen Aufklärung’, Ballades et chansons folkloriques: Laval, PQ, 1989, 107–13
PETER BRANSCOMBE