“The boy’s magic horn. Old German Songs ” ( Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Alte deutsche Lieder ) - a collection of German folk songs prepared and published in 1806-1808 in Heidelberg by two poets from the Heidelberg circle of romantics - Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano .
The collection includes songs of various genres - soldierly, monastic, robber, domestic, love. Text processing by publishers in some cases meant its complete rewriting. For example, the story of the mermaid Lorelei , which later became widely known, was a figment of the imagination of Brentano.
The luminaries of German philology hastened to point out that, like Ossian’s notorious songs, this work could not do without mystification : many of the songs presented were not folk at all, but the author’s ones, although their authors (among them Simon Dach and Grimmelshausen ) were forgotten by the beginning of the 19th century [1] . However, JV Goethe rose to the defense of the collection, to which the publishers devoted their work: the great poet said that regardless of their origin, these songs “beat the heart of the German people”.
When compiling the collection, Arnim and Brentano were influenced by the arguments of I. G. Herder about the “ spirit of the people ”, which is reflected in its folklore . When selecting materials for the collection, they were guided by the desire to show the traditional way of German life and did not escape the idealization of German antiquity [2] :
 | The estate-guild system of the Middle Ages, patriarchal relations, combined with stable norms of moral behavior, seemed to him an ideal in comparison with modern society, marked by a struggle of selfish interests and a devaluation of ethical standards. |  |
“Boy’s Magic Horn” wrote a bright page in the annals of German romanticism . The collection aroused interest in national folklore in general and in "peasant songs" in particular. The work begun by the Heidelbergs to popularize folk literary creativity was continued by the publication of folk tales in the treatment of the Brothers Grimm . Some of the subjects of the collection (for example, about the Hameln Pied Piper ) became known far beyond the borders of Germany.
The Boy’s Magic Horn was one of Gustav Mahler’s handbooks; in addition to the song cycle of the same name , the vocal parts of the Second and Third (fifth part) symphonies of the composer are written on the texts from the collection, the image of Anthony of Padua from the Second Symphony [3] [4] and his “ Songs of the Wandering Journeyman ” also open lines from the "Magic Horn" [5] . The musical processing of songs compiled by Arnim and Brentano was also dealt with by K. M. Weber , F. Mendelssohn , R. Schumann , I. Brahms , A. Webern , A. Tsemlinsky .
See also
- Ancient Russian poems
- Hameln Pied Piper
Notes
- ↑ Des Knaben Wunderhorn . Britannica. Date of treatment December 12, 2012. Archived January 18, 2013.
- ↑ Turaev S.V. Literature of the beginning of the 19th century: [German literature]. Novalis. Teak. Jean-Paul Richter Gelderlin. Late Schiller. Kleist. Heidelberg Romantics // History of World Literature: In 8 Volumes / USSR Academy of Sciences; Institute of World Lite. them. A. M. Gorky. - M .: Nauka, 1983-1994. - To the title. l Edition: History of World Literature: in 9 vols. T. 6. - 1989. - P. 36-51.
- ↑ Barsova I.A. Gustav Mahler Symphonies. - M .: Soviet composer, 1975 .-- S. 26. - 496 p.
- ↑ Barsova I.A. Gustav Mahler. Personality, worldview, creativity // Gustav Mahler. Letters. Memories. - M .: Music, 1968 .-- S. 37.
- ↑ Michalek Andreas. Werke . Gustav Mahler . Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft. Date of appeal September 21, 2015.