Schubert's Im Freisn (In the Open) (D. 880), of March 1826, sings of the love of hearth and home that is at the heart of the Germanic ideal of Heimat. And idealized it is in Schubert's setting of Johann Seidl's eight-stanza poem: everything glows with a luminosity all the more acute because it is bathed in the soft light of the stars, as embodied in the gentle piano accompaniment. Although not a strictly strophic setting, Schubert's music seems to gaze toward home in a handful of kind-hearted melodies that recur from verse to verse. The arching vocal melody with its comforting cadences ideally embodies the poem's longing for home.

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