Four of the Fünf Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 127, were composed in 1840—Schumann's "year of song," during which he set at least 137 poems. Among these are the 16 Dichterliebe, Op. 48, all settings of verses by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). (In all, Schumann set 41 of Heine's poems.) Two of the songs of Op. 127, "Dein Angesicht" and "Es leuchtet meine Liebe," both poems by Heine, were originally intended for the Dichterliebe collection. The fourth selection of Op. 127, "Mein altes Ross," is from 1850, a year that saw Schumann's second greatest output of lieder. Op. 127 was published in 1854 by Heinze.

In "Sängers Trost" (Singer's Solace), by Justinus Kerner, the narrator asks the stars and moon not to forget him. A simple sixteenth note pattern permeates every bar of the piano accompaniment, while the voice part becomes gradually higher as the singer speaks to the stars.

Heine's "Dein Angesicht" (Your Face) considers the countenance of someone he has seen recently in a dream. He comments on how sweet and pretty she is and how red her lips are, but soon "küsst sie bleich der Tod" (the kiss of death will make them pale). In E flat major, the slow song features a voice part that hovers around repeated notes at the beginning of each line over a simple accompaniment. At "the kiss of death," Schumann moves into darker harmonies, but treats this as a central section, returning to the opening music for a repeat of the first verse.

In "Es leuchtet meine Liebe" (My Love Shines Forth), by Heine, the narrator's love manifests itself in a fairy tale in which a knight and a maiden encounter a giant in an enchanted garden. The maiden runs off, the knight is wounded and the giant stumbles home. The tale will end only with the dreamer's death. Schumann's unusually difficult accompaniment consists of chords on every beat that rise and trace a stepwise path unrelated to the intense voice part. Numerous modulations in the through-composed setting support the fantastic nature of the text, as the piano loudly conveys the maiden's flight. A piano postlude shifts the harmony from minor to major, signalling release from the frightening fairy tale.

Dotted rhythms convey the tread of a tired horse in "Mein altes Ross" (My old Steed), setting a poem by Moritz von Strachwitz.

"Schlusslied des Narren" (Final Song of the Fools) is by William Shakespeare, in a German translation by Ludwig Tieck and A. Schlegel. Schumann composed his setting of Feste's last song from Twelfth Night on February 1, 1840. A lively melody in 6/8 conveys the lighthearted atmosphere of Feste's speech while the shifts between major and minor express his ambivalence toward rain and wind.

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2.Dein Angesicht

When the songs of Dichterliebe, Op. 48, were known as 20 Lieder und Gesänge aus dem Lyrischen Intermezzo im Buch der Lieder, "Dein Angesicht," Op. 127/2 (Your Dear Face), was the latter cycle's fifth work; however, Robert Schumann cut this tune, along with others, probably because it interrupted the cycle's succession of keys, undermining its organization. The song is a morbid description of a lover's face and is set to a supple melody that floats softly above beamed sixteenth notes. The composer emphasized the poignancy of death's kiss by word-painting: using a change of keys,—genial flats to impassive sharps—then he subdued this doom by repeating a portion of the first verse after having slightly altered its melody. Fourteen years after the work was removed from its original cycle it was published in Fünf Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 127, and became one of the composer's most popular songs.

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3.Es leuchtet meine Liebe

The horrifically violent "Es leuchtet meine Liebe," Op. 127/3 (My Love Gleams), with its savage giant and bleeding knight, is emotionally biographical of Robert Schumann's conflict with his fiancée's father during the time the song was composed (1840); the ogre represented Friedrich Wieck, because he was trying to keep the composer from marrying his daughter Clara. The work's mood of dark terror is quickly presented in the thick, but slightly airy chords of the two-bar prelude. They continue to creep in the treble above the accented octaves in the bass until the music is finally lightened and simplified and the singer partially breaks away from a narrative role to become more tenderly personal. Loving moments are interrupted by a forte cross rhythm, the giant's stomping; the maiden flees and the sforzandi of the piano interlude sound the disastrous attack. As Clara and Robert were eventually married in 1840, they could boast of a "happy ending," but the tune's lovers could not; the stormy, heavy, chromatic octaves of the eight-bar postlude confirm that evil reigns in this somber tale.

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