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In the winter of 1827 Schubert was working on his final vocal cycle Winterreise. The cycle is based on poetry by Wilhelm Müller, a German Romantic poet who died young, like Schubert himself.
The composer stumbled across the first twelve poems of Winterreise in a poetry anthology. They made a profound impression on Schubert and he immediately set them to music. Somewhat later, in the summer of 1827, the composer came across the remaining poems. As a result, Schubert penned a cycle of twenty-four songs.
Unlike the previous cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, in Winterreise there is no plot in the direct sense of the word. Müller’s poems – and Schubert’s music – convey the experiences of a hero, his thoughts, his past and his loneliness.
The first cycle was performed by Schubert himself for an audience of his friends. The first ten songs of the cycle were first performed in public in Vienna in January 1828, already after the composer’s death.
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