In chapter 12 of book two of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lahrjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship), the hero "restless and ill-tempered" sought out the Harper, a mysterious old man he met as part of a theatrical troupe. Outside the Harper's attic room in a shabby inn, Wilhelm hears "somber, deeply moving music...accompanied by anguished singing." Entirely misapprehending what he hears, the narcissistic Wilhelm bursts into the Harper's room, saying "I think you are very fortunate to be able to occupy yourself so pleasantly in your solitude...to find your dearest friend in your own heart." As a reply, the Harper sings "He who gives himself to solitude, is soon, alas! alone." When Schubert set this poem of the Harper in November 1815, he composed a song that answers Wilhelm's misunderstanding with heartbroken and heartbreaking music. Set as a modified strophic song in swaying 6/8 in A minor, Schubert's loneliest key, his Harfenspieler I (Harper's Song I) (D. 325) has an aching melody over a plucked accompaniment in the piano. By dovetailing the opening of Goethe's second verse with the closing of his own first strophe, Schubert makes a seamless whole out of the song despite the frequent pauses on fermatas. But these pauses function more as emotional pivots than as structural pillars, making them sound more like sighs or sobs punctuating the Harper's despairing song. Although Schubert's return to this poem in 1816 might indicate some degree of dissatisfaction with his 1815 song, this first setting is wholly successful in the minds of most critics and certainly as affecting to the hearts of its listeners.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide