Wilhelm Killmayer has written songs since the beginning of his career as a composer, and they are a prominent and essential part of his oeuvre. In the case of Killmayer’s songs, one can clearly see various musical effects influenced by the texts being set, yet these effects nevertheless retain a basic musical identity.

A particular atmosphere is especially noticeable in these settings, to which Killmayer has devoted three groups of works of Friedrich Hölderlin.

In general, Killmayer succeeded in finding a unique aura of sound for his almost complete setting of the poems, a sound quality that is entirely appropriate for this simple and hermetic poetry.

In Killmayer’s two song cycles based on poems by Georg Trakl there is also a musical lyricism growing out of a profound and intense understanding of the text. In a manner appropriate to the poet’s tone of voice, Killmayer’s settings employ a richly varied sound texture to attain a deeper psychological perspective, something that Trakl’s poetry has in common with Hölderlin’s.

Killmayer’s extensive song cycle based on poems by Joseph von Eichendorff can be performed in two ways: either as an alternation between songs for unaccompanied male chorus and songs for tenor with piano or as a conventional song cycle.