Schubert's close friend and roommate Johann Mayrhofer was, among other things, a poet, a classicist, and a misogynist. In his poem "Iphigenia," Mayrhofer was a poet, a classicist, but, thankfully, not a misogynist. Taking as his base the Greek myth of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and sister of Orestes who was exiled to Tauris, Mayrhofer created a poem that exalted what he thought of as feminine longing. Schubert's through-composed setting of Iphigenia (D. 573), from July 1817, has a classical purity that seems almost Gluckian—hardly surprising in that Schubert knew Gluck's opera Iphigénia en Tauride well; many of his early songs, furthermore, emulate Gluck's high-classical style. One of a number of Mayrhofer songs based on Greek myth whose tone is elevated and whose musical imagery is classically derived, Schubert's Iphigenia moves from radiantly clear cantilena to a more agitated and tumultuous central section, ending with a grandly noble final section.

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