Unlike most of Schubert's composition exercises done for Antonio Salieri, Pensa, che questo istante (Consider This Moment) exists not only as a vocal melody, but as a vocal melody with a piano accompaniment. Apparently, by September 1813, the teacher considered the student ready to take on the task of composing accompaniments. In the event, this setting of Pietro Metastasio's poem from his "Hercules at the Crossroads" has the same sort of Italianate bel canto vocal melody as so many of Schubert's other works for Salieri. This work, of course, has a distinctively heroic melody, as befits Hercules, but the simplicity of the piano accompaniment borders on simplistic. Although Schubert had written much more accomplished accompaniments for songs he composed outside his curriculum with Salieri, for Salieri, he restrained himself.

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