Quartets for male and female voices were rare in Schubert, but, unlike the fairly frequent drinking song quartets for all-male voices, Schubert's quartets for mixed voices were more enlightened and exalted. And of all his quartets for mixed voices, his June 1816 setting of Johann Uz's An die Sonne (To the Sun) (D. 439) is perhaps the most exalted. It is certainly the most literally enlightened: the outer verses of the song are as radiant in their F major tonality and glowing in their double-dotted rhythms as anything in his vocal oeuvre, rivaling the biggest choruses of Handel. The central sections of the work, however, are more authentically Schubertian in their exaltation. As the voices sing together the final verse—Ich fühle, dass ich sterblich bin (I feel that I am mortal)—there is a sense of rapture that surpasses even Schubert's setting of the angelic choir from Goethe's Faust from later in June.

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