Das deutsche Lied, one of Anton Bruckner's last completed works, is in his perennial small medium of the male chorus, in this case supplemented by brass instruments. Like its contemporary, the larger and more striking Helgoland, it represents one of the composer's occasional excursions into German nationalism. Although Bruckner tended to avoid politics and to look to his Catholic faith as the lodestar of his life, he was a product of the social order in which he lived; many of his greatest mature works bear dedications to the rulers of the various German-speaking countries who became his patrons. The current work invites comparison with those of Bruckner's worldly hero, Richard Wagner, specifically in the choruses of the men of Brabant and the Gibichungs. The implied politics of the text would likewise have appealed Wagner.

Das deutsche Lied, compared with still later compositions of Bruckner, is somewhat conventional, albeit effective and infectious. The patriotic text, in German, is by Erich Fels. The words delineate tempestuous, storm-swept lands and seascapes through which a German song resounds, rousing the "slumbering brothers" to action, unbowed by any perils. (The sentiment is eerily premonitory of the mindset that would evolve in this part of the world three decades later.) Pounding martial unisons of brass and percussion herald the stern words of the chorus. A long Brucknerian crescendo on the words "so schalle, so schmettre" builds. Occasional harmonic phrases and cadences call to mind the composer's contemporary Psalm 150 and Helgoland, but overall the song speaks a language of an earlier time; it is after all a occasional piece, populist in its aim. The brief work ends amid fanfares from the brass as a backdrop to the words "die deutsche Gesang durchs gefahrdete Land!"

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