Die junge Nonne (The Young Nun) (D. 828) was apparently composed on or about March 3, 1825, because on that day the soprano Sophie Muller wrote of it in her diary: "After lunch Schubert came downstairs and brought a new song, Die junge Nonne." She also noted that the song was "splendidly composed." Indeed: it is one of Schubert's most powerful and dramatic songs, a song that, for certain composers, called out for an orchestral setting (thankfully only Liszt and Schubert's brother Ferdinand actually did such a thing). But the song's inherent drama has garnered it more performances and recordings than many another Schubert song.

Understandably so: the song sets the pietistic verses of the ardently Roman Catholic poet Jakob Nikolaus Craigher de Jachelutta to music whose storms and stresses elevate its sentimental religiosity to something approaching great art. Of course, it is Schubert's song that really offers the great art: his vocal melody towers over the tempests of the piano's accompaniment, riding the accompaniment over the thunder of chromatic modulations and the lightning of diminished seventh chords, right through to the final ecstatic refrain of "Alleluia!" Although performances that take the song's trite religious text too seriously risk turning it into a show-stopper from The Sound of Music, taken on its own musical terms, Die junge Nonne is as affecting in its way as Schubert's greatest dramatic songs.

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