Schubert, Müller, and Die Schöne Müllerin

Book excerpt: The collaboration of Schubert and the poet Wilhelm Müller produced some of the best loved of nineteenth-century lieder - in particular the song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. Professor Youens shows us how this archetypal tale of love and rejection, which has its origins in medieval romance, Minnesong and popular German legend, is reflected in the poet's own experience, the realms of art and life intertwining. Professor Youens considers other poets' explorations of the theme of a miller maid and her suitors, and looks at other musical settings of Müller's mill poems. But above all she examines Müller's permutation of the literary legends as an exploration of erotic obsession, delusion, frenzy, disillusionment and death and the way in which Schubert crucially altered Müller's vision when the poetic cycle became a musical text.