A tiny little song (32 bars taking less than a minute and a half to perform) with a great big message ("For heavenly voices sing to me that she will be yours, yours!"), Schubert's setting of Count Stolberg-Stolberg's "Stimme der Liebe" (The Voice of Love) (D. 412) is too big for its britches. It starts pianissimo and ends fortissimo. It begins in D major, but modulates through E flat, D flat, and C sharp minor to return to D major at nearly the last possible moment. The voice's tessitura starts high and ends higher with an A an octave and a half over middle C functioning as the climax of the song. Although most commentators think of Stimme der Liebe as one of the great songs of 1816, many also note that it covers an immense amount of harmonic, melodic, and emotional space in a very, very short amount of time.

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