Of the 16 songs Schubert composed in September 1815, eight of them set poems by Friedrich Klopstock. Das Rosenband (The Rosy Ribbon, D. 280) proved the most popular of these settings; indeed, it proved to be the most often set of all Klopstock's poems; at last count, there were nine settings of it, including settings by MacDowell and Richard Strauss. Schubert's Das Rosenband is a modified strophic song with Klopstock's four verses paired and with the music of the second pair of verses clearly an elaboration of the music of the first pair. A small but deeply felt song of quiet rapture, Schubert's vocal arioso style here is utterly intimate yet gloriously ecstatic. The piano accompaniment seems to look forward to the keyboard writing of Schumann in its chromatic delicacy.

© All Music Guide