Evening song

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The evening song is a type of poem from the group of motifs "End of the day, evening, entry of night". Evening songs often have a contemplative, calm, and occasionally sad tone. Topics of the evening songs in addition to the evening specific natural beauty as dusk, moon and stars reflections on human life, appeal to God for forgiveness and blessing for the night, which is often perceived as a threat. Occasionally there are also analogies between the evening of the day and the end of life . The evening song is viewed as an independent poetic genre from the age of the Reformation , although it has older (ancient and Christian) forerunners. Evening songs originally come from the context of sacred chants and can be viewed as religious poems; however, over time, more and more popular elements found their way into this form of poetry. Later representatives, such as the evening song by Matthias Claudius , used this contrast between religious and secular traditions as a stylistic device.

Evening songs were often set to music, the simpler texts were used as bedtime songs .

Well-known evening songs

Parodies

  • Evening song by the chamber virtuoso by Erich Kästner ("You my ninth, last symphony!")

The well-known evening song of Matthias Claudius' "The moon has risen" (1779), which he himself wrote after Paul Gerhardt's Now rest all forests (1647), was parodied particularly frequently . For example:

See also

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Werner Ross: Evening songs. Changes in lyrical technique and lyrical will to express themselves . In: Germanic-Romanic monthly . NF 5 (1955), p. 307.
  2. ↑ Reiner Marx: Untouched nature, Christian hope and human fear - The teaching of the householder in Claudius' evening song . In: Poems and Interpretations, Vol. 2: Enlightenment and Storm and Drang , Reclam: Stuttgart (1984), p. 342 f.