ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two songs for bass voice published by Cappi and Czerny: Greisengesang (Song of Old Age) Friedrich Ruckert, and Dithyrambe (Dithyramb) Friedrich von Schiller. Although this set was published three months before Opus 59, it was probably assembled at about the same time, that is to say some time in January or early February 1826. In both sets the first song is modelled on the Persian ghazal. This is the first of two sets in which the imagination is seen as a consolation for 'miserable reality'. According to Walther Durr in the Neue Schubert Ausgabe and his preface to Volume 7 of the Barenreiter/Henle edition of Franz Schubert's songs there are three versions of Greisengesang and two of Dithyrambe. The other versions of both songs must have been revisions of those in the fair copy. This suggests that Schubert took great trouble in preparing the set for the publisher.
