Unaccompanied men's choir:

‘Goldne Brücken seien alle Lieder mir’ (comp. by 1853)

‘Spanisches Lied’ Op. 6 no. 1 (comp. April 1852, publ. Dec. 1853) – see also Heyse

‘Frühlingslied’ Op. 85 no. 5 (comp. March 1878, publ. July 1882)

‘Geistliches Wiegenlied’ Op. 91 no. 2 (comp. 1863–4?, publ. Dec. 1884)

‘Mein Herz ist schwer’ Op. 94 no. 3 (comp. 1883–4, publ. Dec. 1884)

BRAHMS LEFT just a small number of settings of poetry by Geibel. However, an 1878 letter to Dessoff declares:

We cannot know how many works Brahms destroyed, but one early setting for male-voice choir was recently discovered in the City Archives of Celle, northeast of Hanover. A concert in early May 1853 in that town included a male-voice quartet ‘Goldne Brücken seien alle Lieder mir’:

It is hard to image a poem more ideally suited to setting. Evocative images are conveyed in a transparent metre, at an ideal length. It is little wonder that Geibel appealed to the youthful Brahms.

Another early setting, the solo song ‘Spanisches Lied’ Op. 6 no. 1, stems from a volume Geibel compiled in collaboration with Heyse, the 1852 Spanisches Liederbuch. Brahms's song dates from April 1852, just short of his nineteenth birthday, when the volume was hot off the press. His choice of poem, in which the young Spanish girl delights in her seductive powers, shows his early interest in Madchenlieder. Brahms may have been inspired by Schumann's Spanisches Liederspiel Op. 74, published in 1849. (He cannot have known Schumann's Spanische Liebeslieder Op. 138 because, although this was composed in the same year, it was only published in 1857).