Even with eight songs written on a single day, October 15, 1815, was not the busiest day in Schubert's compositional life; there were other days when he wrote just as many and sometimes days when he wrote even more. Still, for an 18-year-old, eight songs on a single day is quite an achievement, and eight songs of such high quality is even more of one. The reason for such astounding productivity seems to be the day itself: it was the name day of the woman with whom Schubert was in love, Therese Grob. Schubert, a poor teacher at a time when marriages were legally permissible only if the husband-to-be could demonstrate his ability to support a wife and family, would be never be able to marry Therese if he did not succeed as a composer. Thus, the eight songs of October 15 are testimony to his love for Therese, his thwarted lust for Therese and, not uncoincidentally, his musical genius.

An die Geliebte (To the Beloved, D. 303) is precisely the kind of song one might suppose that Schubert might compose in such a circumscribed situation: passionate but restrained, chaste but full of ardent longing, sublimated but sublime. Like Labetrank der Liebe, his other setting of a poem by Johann Stoll from that same day, An die Geliebte is a simple strophic song in two verses with a subdued piano accompaniment supporting a yearning vocal line of endless expressivity. Although not perhaps quite on the same exquisitely exalted level as Labetrank der Liebe, An die Geliebte is still a ravishingly beautiful song.

© All Music Guide