Silcher was one of the most important protagonists of choir singing, as Wiki puts it. He made and published an immense number of arrangements, chiefly for male voices a cappella; bestsellers of their time. Most tunes were known folksongs or songs of other composers (often not named by Silcher!). For the rest no older printed version is known, so Silcher might have invented them. These are often considered very sentimental nowadays. Present day's choirs and younger singers try to escape them.

Ach wie ist's möglich dann was known and sung by my mother, but is certainly not among the best-known songs. Die Lorelei, however, is. In many ships passing that rock on the Rhine river, one can hear senior Japanese businessmen bawling it from the bottoms of their hearts, making a considerable effort to approximate German phonetics. Heine's fans are usually not happy about this.