ABSTRACT
Michael Vogl had sung the role of Pizarro at the first performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, and Franz Schubert, who had no one but himself to sing his songs at musical gatherings, had for some time wanted to interest him in his music and, if possible, work with him. The set is the first of eight involving poems by Schubert's friend Johann Mayrhofer (1787-1836), who exercised a great influence on the composer's intellectual development between autumn 1816 and late 1820, when, for some unexplained reason, they became estranged. Schubert, being subject to bouts of deep melancholia himself, was broadly sympathetic to his ideas. He set 47 of Mayrhofer's poems, more than those of any other poet except Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The eight sets contain 16 of them. This is the first set which Schubert co-ordinated through his references to a specific pitch.
