Lied (Ferne von der grossen Stadt) (Song Far from the Big City, D. 483), of September 1816, is not a precursor to Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd; it is more a Fragonard "fête galante" or even a Boucher portrait of pre-Revolutionary aristocrats tricked up in shepherds' costumes. Oddly, though, this sense of Rococo frippery is more apparent in Schubert's strophic setting than it is in the poem by Caroline Pichler he sets. Pichler—the Madame de Staël of Vienna—idealized the joys of country living the way only someone who never visits the country could. Schubert— who loved Nature too well to idealize her—takes Pichler's poem and places it in the quotation marks of his Haydnesque music. Indeed, literally Haydnesque: Schubert quotes Haydn's Imperial Hymn toward the end of each verse, and the hymn's cheerful pomp-and-circumstance melody and harmonies inform and underlie the rest of the song.

While not one of Schubert's most heartfelt songs, Lied (Ferne von der grossen Stadt)} is certainly one of his funniest.

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