Who's behind the notes? Discover Franz Schubert: The Prolific Master of Romantic Melody
"Seufzer" (Sighs), D. 198, is one of Franz Schubert's early songs composed in 1815 when he was just 18 years old. It sets to music a poem by Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, a German poet of the Göttinger Hainbund. This Lied exemplifies Schubert's emerging talent for melodic beauty and emotional expression. The composition features a melancholic, sighing motif in the piano accompaniment that perfectly captures the poem's theme of longing and unrequited love, characteristic of the Romantic spirit that would define Schubert's later masterpieces.