(Ger.: ‘cradle song’).
A
song actually or supposedly designed to lull children to sleep; the German
equivalent of the English Lullaby and the French Berceuse. Numerous examples of the
Wiegenlied exist in German folk music (see E. Gerstner-Hirzel: Das
volkstümliche deutsche Wiegenlied, Basle, 1984), and its influence can be
discerned in many of the settings with piano accompaniment that belong to the
19th-century lied tradition, notably those of Bernhard Flies (wrongly
attributed to Mozart as k350) and Brahms (op.49 no.4).
Both these songs are typical of the genre in their use of flat keys (F major
and E
major) and in
their time signatures (6/8 and 3/4 respectively). Brahms’s Geistliches
Wiegenlied for alto, viola and piano op.91 no.2 actually uses a folk
melody, ‘Josef lieber, Josef mein’, and Brahms also included a Wiegenlied among
the 14 folksong arrangements he made about 1858 for Clara Schumann’s children.
Schubert’s well-known Schlafe, holder, süsser Knabe d498
(like two other cradle songs by him, d304 and d867) is unusual in being in quadruple metre.
Other examples among German lieder include those by Spohr (op.25 no.1; op.103 no.4), Weber (op.13 no.5), Cornelius (op.1 no.3), Reger (op.43 no.5; op.51 no.3; op.97 no.2; op.142 no.1), Strauss (op.41 no.1; op.49 no.3) and Wolf. As might be expected, the Wiegenlied is almost always written for solo (usually female) voice; in Schumann’s Wiegenlied op.78 no.4, however, the ailing child is sung to by both parents (soprano and tenor). Examples of the operatic Wiegenlied include the Sandman’s song in Act 2 scene i of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (1893) and Marie’s lullaby in Act 2 scene i of Berg’s Wozzeck (1917–22).
MALCOLM BOYD