Writing hymns to the moon has been an age-old preoccupation of poets and composers, especially during periods of emotional distress. And no period was more emotionally distressed than the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: with the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the beginnings of emergence of the nation-states of Europe, the dramatic quality of literature and music of the period might be seen as inevitable.

And so were hymns to the moon: one indicator would be the number of times Schubert, the greatest of the early German Romantic composers, set poems with the word "Mond" (moon) in the title. Indeed, so fond was Schubert of moon songs that he set two songs by the German Romantic poet Ludwig Hölty with the title "An den Mond" (To the Moon), the first (D. 193) in the spring of 1815, the second (D. 468) in August 1816. Although the earlier song has proven the more popular of the two, the second is by no means inferior to it. Indeed, with its subtle strophic setting of Hölty's three-verse poem, beginning each verse in A major only to end each verse in A minor (Schubert's favorite pair of keys and favorite melancholic harmonic progression), the second song is in some ways more characteristic of Schubert. Taken together with the restrained piano accompaniment underlying a vocal melody which is part Italian bel canto and part German lied, the second Hölty An den Mond is arguably as fine a song as the first.

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