Ten months after first setting "Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt" (Who gives himself to loneliness), Schubert again turned to the poem from book two, chapter 12 of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lahrjahre. At this point in the novel, the hero has gone to visit the mysterious and tragic old man known as the Harper in his attic room and hears him sing this song accompanied by his harp. Although it explains nothing in particular about the terrible crime and the dreadful fate of the Harper, it does—with frightening clarity—describe the common condition of suffering humanity. Both settings of the Harper's song are in A minor, Schubert's key for loneliness and alienation. In both versions, the modulatory scheme involves a move from the tonic to the submediant and back again; and in both versions, the piano accompaniment fittingly emulates the sound of a plucked or strummed harp. But where the first setting (D. 325) had been more or less strophic, the second version (D. 478, No. 1) is thoroughly through-composed. After a brief but chilling sequence of dissonant chords, the first of Goethe's three verses is set as an anguished melody built around the tonic triad punctuated by three fermatas. After the third fermata, the short second verse begins in the submediant, but quickly moves chromatically back to the tonic for the third verse. Schubert sets Goethe's third verse in two continuous sections. The first with a slowly creeping melody that hovers between the tonic minor and the submediant. The second repeats the final three lines of the poem in a melody that crawls lower and lower in the vocalist's range for the words "Ah, when I lie lonely in the grave," followed by the songs only fortissimo outburst for the words "there they (the Harper's pain and suffering) will leave me alone." A truly heartbroken and heartbreaking song, "Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt" is one of Schubert's very greatest hymns to loneliness.

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2.An die Türen will ich schleichen

In all probability, when Schubert set all three of the Harper songs from Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lahrjahre in September 1816, he conceived of them as a group. All three are sung by the enigmatic and tragic character of the Harper, all three are in A minor with a modulation to the major submediant, and all three are lonely laments by a composer who was to become the master of the mad lament in his great song cycles. The last of the three Harper songs, An die Türen will ich schleichen (I will steal from door to door) (D. 478, No. 3) comes from chapter 14 of book five of the novel. By this point in the narrative, the Harper has gone from heartbroken sorrow to numbed madness and Schubert's setting of his last song is reminiscent of Der Leiermann (Winterreise). Yet for all his seemingly insensate madness, the Harper's last song has its moments of passionate intensity and a kind of mental acuity the empty abyss Der Leiermann wholly lacks. In the first place, An die Türen will ich schleichen is conceived and executed as a contrapuntal piece. The piano's eight-bar introduction is essentially a three-part invention that broadens into a four-part invention with the introduction of the voice in the ninth bar. Secondly, Schubert has set Goethe's eight-line poem in two halves, separating the first four lines and the last four lines by a four-bar piano interlude. This larger structural division masks what is essentially a modified strophic song, with both strophes concluding with the same melodic and harmonic cadence. Thirdly, this melodic and harmonic cadence takes the music from the dominant of the flat submediant back to the tonic minor with a pungent fortepiano on the false dominant. This dynamic emphasis on a false dominant underlines the words "And I shall go on my way" in the first strophe and the words "I know not why he should weep" in the second. Thus, Schubert sends the Harper on his way with a heartrending cadence and a compassionate tear.

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