In composing a musical setting of Goethe's celebrated poem "An den Mond," Franz Schubert faced a problem that song composers had encountered for centuries: how can one draw relationships between text and music within a repeating musical form? The challenge arises from the simple fact that semantics are separate from structure, and that music is thought to have an obligation to both masters. Composers of light song in the sixteenth century solved the problem by writing poems that had parallel sentiments in parallel places within strophes, so that the stirring musical figure for "ardor" would, in the next verse, set with equal poignancy the word "flame" or "fire." However, Romantic composers regarded such conceits as transparent contrivances, and, consequently, in the nineteenth century, the question came to involve a text-tone relationship that fluctuates between general mood, specific pictorialism, and abstract musical gesture.

The challenge proved difficult for Schubert, and his first effort at setting "An den Mond" in August of 1815 proved unsatisfactory. It cast the song in a strophic (strictly repeating) form, which maintained a relationship of resistance with the poem's taut and anxiously wandering dramatic contour. Though certain verses shared a similar semantic alignment—the beginning of the fourth stanza, "Run, run, dearest river, run! Never will I rejoice," resonates rather sympathetically with the sixth: "Rush down the valley, river, do not hesitate or cease …"—Schubert eventually decided that a freer compositional framework would give him a wider field of expressive possibilities. His second attempt utilized a modified strophic form, in which some musical repetitions occur, reflecting the omnipresent themes of Goethe's poem. These repeating forms are opened up to important interruptions and modifications, dictated by the relative turbulence or calm, angst or repose, of the text.

The first two strophes, each encompassing two quatrains of the text, utilize the same musical materials: a plaintive melody, descending in a winding path through the first half of the strophe, is answered by a gentle melodic arc in the second; the straightforward, lyrical line is underscored by an unobtrusive chordal accompaniment. The third strophe begins as did the previous two, with the plaintive descending line; there is a foreboding modal shift, however, that subtly foreshadows the subsequently complete disruption of the strophic pattern. Upon arriving at the sixth quatrain of the poem, Schubert introduces new musical devices that not only depict pictorially the babbling, relentless stream described in the poem, but also enhance the feeling of restlessness embodied by the text. The staid chordal accompaniment breaks into undulating arpeggio figures, and the vocal line becomes more intense and assertive. The initial musical material returns for the final strophe, but in the last half (or, following the text, the final quatrain), Schubert plays a curious musical game that is momentarily disorienting. The singer dips into a lower vocal range and takes up one of the inner voices of the piano's chordal harmony, while the piano temporarily assumes the melodic role. A possible explanation for this odd choice of sonorities is finally heard in the last lines of the text: "Happy the man . . . who draws a friend to his breast . . . [And] With whom through the labyrinth of the heart / He wanders in the night." The theme of wandering is played out literally by the singer, who strays from the place of melodic prominence in order to explore the maze of self.

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