Schubert's Morgenlied (Morning Song, D. 685) is domestic Schubert, Schubert for children to sing while mother accompanies at the piano, Schubert for the whole family. The poem by the Viennese evangelist Zacharias Werner could be considered just a wee little bit too cute with its singing birds, cheery homilies, and too-pat juxtaposition of dark and light, happy and sad, youth and age. Schubert sets Werner's four verses more or less strophically—that is, each of the four verses takes roughly the same musical form. But in each ones there are small changes that reflect the images of the verse text. Like Werner's juxtapositions, each of Schubert's verses offers a slow and meditative opening in A minor followed by a fast and joyful close in A major. Although clearly not a song to inspire the same sort of popular enthusiasm as Erlkönig or Gretchen am Spinnrade, Morgenlied does what it sets out to do: give a happy little sermon set to music.

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