Hummel from Baden is naturally close to the linguistic directness and thoughtfulness of the Alemannic Hermann Hesse. However, there are also close family ties to northern Germany, whose harsh poetry captured by Theodor Storm finds a musical echo in Hummel. "Towards the north goes the seagull, / Towards the north goes my heart" begins one of these songs ("Die Möwe und mein Herz"). The barren nature and landscape is musically reduced here in a peculiar expressiveness to a monotonously repeated two-part accompanying motif, over which the song rises in clear intervals that manage with a total of four different notes. The Storm settings - with the exception of "Die Stadt" (1983) - were all composed in 1975/76 and are not only the simplest, but probably also the most catchy of Bertold Hummel's songs. Their folk-song-like approach sometimes allows - as in earlier times - a unique notation of the music for several verses of the poem, for example in the particularly graceful "Das Mädchen mit den hellen Augen", in "Mondlicht" and in the tender "Über die Heide". This heath song by Hummel, which trusts completely in the simple melody, can dispense with interpretations of details such as the echoing footsteps or the brewing wafts of mist - interpretations that can even be found in the simple composition of the text by Brahms (op. 86/4)

Wolfgang Osthoff (in "Zu den Liedern Bertold Hummels", Tutzing 1998)