In April 1816, Franz Schubert's dear friend Josef von Spaun selected a handful of the composer's best Lieder to texts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—including the now-famous Erlkönig—and sent them to the venerable and hugely influential poet for his inspection. Goethe was hardly enamored of Schubert's work, preferring as he did an older and altogether more straightforward variety of German song than is to be found even in Schubert's earliest Lieder, and returned them perfunctorily. Goethe's snub must have been painful to the young composer, but in the end Schubert seems to have been little affected by it, for he neither abandoned Goethe as his favorite source of verse nor in any way shied away from composing Lieder in his own inimitable—if not Goethe-pleasing—style. An Schwager Kronos, D. 369, very probably composed sometime during 1816, is both a setting of Goethe and a continuation of some of the most striking features of the best-known of the Goethe-Lieder from 1815, Erlkönig.

According to a note at the end of the poem, Goethe wrote An Schwager Kronos, which is usually translated as "To Brother Time, the Coachman" (Schwager literally translates as "brother-in-law," but during Goethe's time was commonly used to refer to a driver) on October 10, 1774. It tells of a fascinating trip: the passenger cries out to the driver, who is of course none other than Chronos himself, to drive faster and faster—he wishes to "plunge headlong into life." Inspiration fills the soul, eternal life seems within grasp, and a young lady glances at them, offering a cooling shadow and some "refreshment." Then, as the sun sinks, the passenger demands the greatest adventure of all, commanding the driver to blow his horn and drive straight into the bowels of hell to meet the king of the underworld.

Schubert manages to catch all of Goethe's rapid-fire fluctuations of tone and emotion. He fashions an electrifying perpetual motion accompaniment which allows the text to unfold in episodic fashion while never letting up on its forward progress. Broad octaves in the piano accompany the text, "Up then ... striving and hoping," and rich bass arpeggios hail the "high, wide ... ring of life." Speculation about the maiden's "refreshment" is made in a gentle, appropriately sparkling D major. As the shadowy maiden is left behind and the helter-skelter pace recommences, Schubert makes a brief reprise of the song's opening phrase. Finally, after a tremendous chromatic build-up, the piano sounds the poem's horn-calls and the song closes robustly.

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