Idens Schwanenlied (Ida's Swan Song, D. 317) of October 1815 takes up the theme and the story of Ida from Schubert's Kosegarten settings of July 1815: Idens Nachtgesang and Von Ida. Ida was a bereft woman whom Schubert left waiting quietly crying for her lover to return. Like Schubert's other Ida settings, Idens Schwanenlied is a pale and restrained strophic song, a song whose minor-key melody does not have the deeper pathos of which Schubert even at this stage in his career was capable. There is more sorrow in the piano postlude to each verse than there is in the entire vocal melody. But, then, it is always more difficult to play a quietly sad character than it is to play a loudly histrionic character.

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