ABSTRACT
Heliopolis is a sequence of six epigrams and 20 poems Mayrhofer worked on over a number of years and completed in the autumn of 1821. Schubert sets four of the poems as Heliopolis I, Heliopolis II, Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren and Nachtviolen. Schubert divides Heliopolis I into two parts. The first deals with the pilgrim's inability to find any information about the city of the sun. The music is in the minor, through-composed, and begins with the voice doubling the piano's single bass line; the sparsity of the music illustrating the 'cold, harsh north'. Schubert gradually fills out the texture until at the end of the second part it becomes as full as it could possibly be. The second part starts as soon the pilgrim notices the sunflower. The key turns to the major, the music becomes more structured, especially when the sunflower speaks, and the voice dips below the piano only rarely.
