ABSTRACT
Pyrker was appointed Patriarch of Venice in 1820 and Archbishop of Erlau in 1827. Schubert first met him in 1820 at the house of Matthaus von Collin, and the following year he dedicated his Op. 4 set to him. They met again when he visited Bad Gastein in August 1825. In all probability Pyrker had a hand in selecting the poems. Both involve the process of looking upwards, Das Heimweh to the majesty of the mountain peaks, Die Allmacht to the majesty of the Almighty One. Schubert must have decided these songs were worthy of publication shortly after leaving Bad Gastein and returning to Vienna, for it was then that he made structural alterations to his original version of Das Heimweh. At the end of Das Heimweh the German sixth, which has characterized the music in G minor, is suddenly changed into a diminished seventh to convey a stab of homesickness.
