If for Beethoven, C minor was the key of fate but a fate which could be heroically overcome (one thinks, of course, of the Fifth Symphony), then for Beethoven F minor was the key of fate but a fate which could not be overcome, a fate which ultimately overcomes and destroys the hero (one thinks, of course, of the Appassionata Sonata). For Schubert, perhaps Beethoven's greatest admirer in Vienna, F minor was also the key of fate triumphant. From this early Grablied (Grave Song) (D. 218) of June 1815 to the late Totengrabers Heimwehe (The Gravedigger's Homesickness) (D. 842), F minor literally puts the hero in his grave. In the early Grablied setting of a poem by Schubert's friend Joseph Kenner, that hero was a war hero, in all probability Theodor Körner, the poet-playwright-soldier who died of wounds suffered in the War of Liberation against Napoleon. Although Körner had died two years earlier, the idea of heroes dying in battle was likely to be once more in Schubert's mind: Napoleon had left his island prison of Elba, gathered an army to him and was once again threatening the peace of Europe. Indeed, the Battle of Waterloo was fought only four days after Schubert wrote his Grablied. A dark and dour strophic song with a powerful yet tender vocal melody over a hymn-like piano accompaniment, Schubert's Grablied does not touch the depths nor the heights of the later Totengrabers Heimwehe but is it still an effective and affecting funeral song.

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