Josef von Spaun was one of Schubert's dearest friends. At times he became a much-needed sponsor for the composer; even when the two were children, the well-off Spaun had provided music paper for Schubert's early efforts at compositions. He was also the author of a single Schubert song text: Der Jüngling und der Tod, D. 545. Spaun and Schubert wrote Der Jüngling und der Tod (The Youth and Death) in the spring of 1817, just about a month after Schubert had set Matthias Claudius' much better-known Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden, D. 531. The similarity of the two songs' subjects is not coincidental—Death and the Maiden had immediately made a splash in Schubert's private circle, and, as far as Spaun was concerned, what was worth doing well was worth doing twice.

Schubert made two versions of Der Jüngling und der Tod. The two are identical until the final portion of the song, during which Death speaks to the youth. In the second version, these bars are cast a perfect fifth higher than they are in the first version, and are furnished with a brief piano transition and postlude that draw on the dactylic (long/short-short) rhythm of Death and the Maiden (Schubert seems to have become enamored of that particular rhythm through his love of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the Allegretto of which is saturated with it). The reason for the change of key is probably a simple one: Schubert originally set Death's words in a much lower register than the youth's words but then realized that, though the dramatic idea might be nice (he had done the same thing in the famous Erlkönig, in which a single singer must play not two but three roles), it meant an awfully wide range for the singer.

The song is marked "Sehr langsam" (very slow) and sets out on its way in C sharp minor with a funeral march-type introduction. The youth's agony is aptly brought to the musical surface with some grim chromaticism; the peace that the youth so desperately hopes Death will bring is finally realized by a turn, at the very end, to B flat major (F major in the second version).

© All Music Guide