Of Schubert's two songs on the Celtic lovers Shilrik and Vinvela, some critics argue that the song bearing their name is the better and other argue that this one bearing the name of the imaginary bard who wrote of them is the better. Those who argue for Shilrik und Vinvela (D. 293) claim that it contains the best music of any of Schubert's Celtic songs. Those who argue for Cronnan (D. 282) assert that it is the best unified of Schubert's Celtic songs. Probably both are in some measure correct, but Cronnan has one other advantage over Shilrik und Vinvela: It has the richest and most evocative Celtic atmosphere, a grim and gloomy landscape that mirrors the dark and despairing song. Another Schubert duet in which the two voices never join, Cronnan tells the tale of the warrior Shilrik returned from battle to see what seems to be his lover Vinvela on a high and storm-wracked hill. But, as he learns to his sorrow, it is not she herself but her ghost he sees. The poem—one of many settings Schubert made purportedly by the Celtic Homer Ossian (actually the Scottish school master James Macpherson in one of the great literary fakes)—is divided into five sections that Schubert's song reproduces: two long, outer sections for baritone (Shilrik) surrounding two short verses for soprano (Vinvela), which in turn surround a short central verse for baritone. After a brief but superb bit of scene painting in the piano, Shilrik's first section moves through dark recitative to bright aria in anticipation of his return to Vinvela. His first vision of her at the close of the first section is full of tender and ardent longing. But her first brief verse is so ethereal in its tessitura and so disembodied in its accompaniment that Shilrik senses that something is wrong and his brief central section asks her why she comes to him alone in hesitant and fearful music. Vinvela's three-line reply tells him in music even more etiolated than before that she rests pale in her tomb. After a short piano introduction, Shilrik begins his final section with a recitative describing the wind-blown departure of Vinvela's ghost, which gives way to a bleak minor-key aria bidding the ghost return to him. While not perhaps the best of the Shilrik and Vinvela songs, Cronnan hangs together as a dramatic scene and creates a strange and spooky atmosphere.

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