Sospeso performs new orchestrations of songs by Brahms (a setting of poetry by Ludwig Hölty) at the Sospeso Cabaret program on April 16, 2005 at studioseven.

The German poet Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty was born on the 21st of December 1748 at the village of Mariensee in Hanover, where his father was pastor. In 1769 he went to study theology at Gottingen. Here he formed a close friendship with J. M. Miller, J. H. Voss, H. Boie, the brothers Stolberg and others, and became one of the founders of the famous society of young poets known as the Gotlinger Dichterbund or Ham. When in 1774 be left the university he had abandoned all intention of becoming a clergyman; but he was not destined to enter any other profession. He died of consumption on the 1st of September 1776 at Hanover. Hölty was the most gifted lyric poet of the Gottingen circle. He was influenced both by Uz and Klopstock, but his love for the Volkslied and his delight in nature preserved him from the artificiality of the one poet and the unworldliness of the other. A strain of melancholy runs through all his lyrics. His ballads are the pioneers of the rich ballad literature on English models, which sprang up in Germany during the next few years. Among his most familiar poems may be mentioned Ub imnier Treu und Redlichkeit, TanIt dem schnen Mai entgegen, Rosen auf dem Veg gestreut, and Wer wollte sich mit Grillen plagen?

Hölty's Gedichte were published by his friends Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg and J. H. Voss (Hamburg, 1783); a new edition, enlarged by Voss, with a biography, appeared in 1804; and a more complete but still imperfect edition by F. Voigts appeared in 1857. The first complete edition was that of Karl Haim (Leipzig, 1870).

From the 1911 Encyclopedia.