Schubert's Der Unglücklicke (The Unlucky One) (D. 713), of 1821, sets a mawkishly sentimental poem by Caroline Pichler, a prominent hostess of Viennese society in the Biedermeier period. She hosted twice-weekly literary soirees which often included music sung by the tenor Johan Michael Vogel. Vogel was himself Schubert's favorite interpreter and it was probable that he importuned Schubert to set Pichler's lovelorn poem.

Schubert's setting of Pichler's seven-stanza poem is a kind of cantata for voice and piano in that it sets the poem as a multi-sectional work in clearly different movements. The first verse is slow and passionate in heart-weary B minor. The second through fourth verses are set as a continuous movement in a faster tempo, with a more agitated vocal line over incessant modulations. The fifth verse, the shortest single "movement" of the cantata, returns to the tonic B—but B major, not B minor—of the opening, but with a much faster tempo and a soaring vocal melody. The sixth verse begins with a brief recitative that becomes a dramatic arioso and leads into the short seventh verse, which returns the music to the opening tonality of B minor but for the first time changes the time signature of the song from triple to duple. With the piano playing double-dotted chords, the vocal melody becomes resigned to its unlucky fate.

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