Schubert did not date the manuscripts of his two early incomplete settings of Friedrich von Matthisson's Der Geistertanz (Ghost Dance), but through internal evidence they both have been dated to the year 1812. The young composer was clearly attracted to ghastly and ghostly poems: his early oeuvre is full of gruesome images. But however much he was attracted to the "rotting bones" and "whining dogs" of Matthisson's poem, he was unable to complete either of his 1812 settings of it. Unlike the intense and apparently demented terror of the first setting, the second setting (D. 15a) has the virtue of coherence: Schubert's music moves through the first three verses before breaking off in mid-piano figuration.

Set in the demonic F minor of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata, the piano accompaniment of the second Der Geistertanz recalls Beethoven's Romantic piano writing with its tremolo chords and massive sonorities. But the vocal melody, if one can call it that, is so furious with its almost shouted lines and so wild with its nearly impossible leaps (Schubert at one point asks the singer to negotiate a 13th!) that not even Beethoven would dare to demand it of a singer. Nor could Schubert: like the first Der Geistertanz, this one simply stops, as if the composer were either unable or unwilling to continue.

© James Leonard, Rovi