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Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Alte deutsche Lieder (German for "The boy's magic horn: old German songs") is a collection of German folk poems and songs edited byAchim von Arnim andClemens Brentano. The book was published in three volumes, the first in 1806, followed by two more in 1808.
The collection of love, soldiers, wandering, and children's songs was an important source of idealized folklore in theRomantic nationalism of the 19th century.Des Knaben Wunderhorn became widely popular across the German-speaking world;Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the most influential writers of the time, declared thatDes Knaben Wunderhorn "has its place in every household".[citation needed]
Arnim and Brentano, like other early 19th-century song collectors, such as the EnglishmanThomas Percy, freely modified the poems in their collection. The editors, both poets themselves, invented some of their own poems. Some poems were modified to fitpoetic metre, to conform to then-modern German spelling, or otherwise to conform more closely to an idealized,Romantic "folk style" (Naturpoesie). A 20th-centurycritical edition byHeinz Rölleke [de] describes the origin of each poem in the collection.[1] Brentano was motivated more by writing his own material than by a strict preservation of the original folk songs.[citation needed]
The young proponents of Romanticism, strongly taken by national sentiments, devoted themselves to the collection and study of the origins of Germanic history infolk songs,fairy tales, myths,sagas (Nibelungenlied), and Germanic literature. Everything untouched by the negative impact of modern civilisation in their eyes, was considered good and helpful for theGesundung der Nation (Recovery of the nation). It was under Brentano's direction that theBrothers Grimm began collecting theirGrimms' Fairy Tales.
Publication of the collection took place during theWar of the Fourth Coalition, in whichNapoleon achieved what seemed at the time a decisive military victory and established a complete French dominance over Germany. Thus, the aspiration for "Recovery of the nation" had a very clear and concrete political aspect.
Selected poems from this collection have been set to music (Lieder) by a number of composers, includingWeber,Schubert,Loewe,Mendelssohn,Schumann,Brahms,Zemlinsky,Schoenberg,Zeisl andWebern.
Gustav Mahler numbered the collection among his favourite books and set its poems to music throughout much of his life. The text of the first of his fourLieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, begun in 1884, is based directly on theWunderhorn poem "Wann mein Schatz", using text from the first two stanzas. Between 1887 and 1901, he wrote two dozen music settings forWunderhorn texts, several of which were incorporated into (or composed as movements for) hisSecond,Third andFourth symphonies. In 1899, he published a collection of a dozenWunderhorn settings that has since become known, slightly confusingly, asSongs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
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