Brahms’ Lovely Contribution to the Trade

For Sunday, October 5, 2025
Geistliches Lied by Brahms

By David Jolliffe

It’s hard to believe that a composition as sublimely lovely as Johannes Brahms’ “Geistliches Lied” (translated as “Sacred Song” or “Spiritual Song”) emerged initially as part of a trade with his violinist friend Joseph Joachim, but that is indeed the case.

Beginning in March 1856, Brahms and Joachim engaged in a weekly “back and forth” exchange of contrapuntal studies—exercises of compositions that have two or more melodic lines sounding together.  One of Brahms’ contributions to this creative enterprise was “Geistliches Lied,” which Brahms scholars date as having been composed in April 1856.  The composition is actually a double canon—a work in which two or more voices initiate a melody at staggered intervals.

 Brahms was initially circumspect about the quality of the work: “No doubt,” he wrote to Joachim, “the canon (referring to “Geistliches Lied”) does not especially please you?  The interludes are quite terrible? The ‘Amen’ will do.  That part pleases me most.”  Though he had some minor quibbles about Brahms’ “lack of harmony” and over reliance on counterpoint, Joachim conceded that, “On the whole, the work is quite beautiful.”

The lyrics for “Geistliches Lied” depict an aura of calm and comfort and come from a poem by the 17th-century German physician and poet Paul Flemming:

Let nought afflict thee with grief;
Be calm, as God ordains,
And so may my will be contented.

Why take thought for the morrow?
The one God who gives thee
What is thine watches over all.

All in thy doings be steadfast
And true. What God decrees
Is best, and this it is acknowledged.