ABSTRACT
The figure of the Wanderer has had a long history in European literature, and has meant different things to different writers. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wanderer is much closer to the spirit of Romanticism. Franz Schubert's setting of the poem is frequently accused of being at odds with Goethe's words, for it makes it appear that the Wanderer has already found the peace of mind he claims to be seeking. As in most of Schubert's three-song sets, the second song provides the reason for the transformation. Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner's birds, instead of striving for something beyond their grasp like Schmidt's Wanderer, find contentment in simply being who they are and where they are. This is the set in which Schubert establishes the principle of progressing towards a state where the tension expressed in the first song is resolved by the conditions described in the second.
