Schubert's 1815 setting of Ludwig Kosegarten's Die Tauschung (The Deception), D. 230, has nothing in common with his 1827 setting of Wilhelm Muller's Tauschung. Indeed, it is by contrast with the later setting that one can see how far Schubert traveled both musically and emotionally over those 12 years. The 18-year-old Schubert who composed the intimately radiant strophic hymn to love found in 1815 had become the 30-year-old Schubert who composed the bitterly ironic ternary structured song which longs for the love lost.

But that ex post facto view of Die Tauschung only enhances its the fragility of its tender charms. With its quietly ecstatic cantilena vocal melody wafting lightly above the supple obbligato melody in the piano accompaniment's treble and its delicate arpeggiated bass, the deception of Die Tauschung seems too good to last.

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