DESCRIPTION:
- Composer: Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 -- 19 November 1828)
- Performers: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano)
- Year of recording: 1961

Die schöne Müllerin (Op. 25, D. 795), is a song cycle on poems by Wilhelm Müller, written in 1823.

00:00:00 - xx. "Prolog" (Der Dichter, als Prolog)
00:02:45 - 01. "Das Wandern" ("Wandering Miller"; B-flat major)
00:05:06 - 02. "Wohin?" ("Where to?"; G major)
00:07:19 - 03. "Halt!" ("Stop!"; C major)
00:08:53 - 04. "Danksagung an den Bach" ("A Song of Thanks to the Brook"; G major)
00:11:16 - 05. "Am Feierabend" ("Rest at the End of the Day"; A minor)
00:13:50 - 06. "Der Neugierige" ("The Inquisitive One"; B major)
00:18:05 - 07. "Ungeduld" ("Impatience"; A major)
00:20:47 - 08. "Morgengruß" ("Good morning"; C major)
00:25:11 - 09. "Des Müllers Blumen" ("The miller's flowers"; A major)
00:28:33 - 10. "Tränenregen" ("Shower of tears"; A major)
00:32:33 - 11. "Mein!" ("Mine!"; D major)
00:34:54 - 12. "Pause" ("Interlude"; B-flat major)
00:39:23 - 13. "Mit dem grünen Lautenbande" ("With the green lute-riband"; B-flat major)
00:41:20 - 14. "Der Jäger" ("The hunter"; C minor)
00:42:28 - 15. "Eifersucht und Stolz" ("Jealousy and pride"; G minor)
00:44:02 - 16. "Die liebe Farbe" ("The Beloved colour"; B minor)
00:48:08 - 17. "Die böse Farbe" ("The Evil colour"; B major)
00:50:09 - 18. "Trockne Blumen" ("Withered flowers"; E minor)
00:53:34 - 19. "Der Müller und der Bach" ("The miller and the brook"; G minor)
00:57:27 - 20. "Des Baches Wiegenlied" ("The brook's lullaby"; E major)
01:03:08 - xx. "Epilog" (Der Dichter, als Epilog)

Die Schöne Müllerin is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed. The work is considered one of Schubert's most important, and it is widely performed and recorded. It is performed by a pianist and a solo singer. The vocal part falls in the range of a tenor or soprano voice, but is often sung by other voices, transposed to a lower range. Since the story of the cycle is about a young man, the work is most often sung by men. The piano part bears much of the expressive burden of the work, and is only seldom a mere "accompaniment" to the singer.

Müller's poems were published in 1820, and Schubert set most of them to music between May and September 1823, while he was also writing his opera Fierrabras. He was 26 years old at the time. Schubert omitted several of the poems, such as a prologue and an epilogue delivered by the poet. The work was published in 1824 under the title Die schöne Müllerin, ein Zyklus von Liedern, gedichtet von Wilhelm Müller, which means, "The Lovely Maid of the Mill, a song cycle to poems by Wilhelm Müller".

The cycle is occasionally referred to as the "Müllerlieder", the Müller songs, a term used by the composer once in a letter. This is not especially useful nomenclature, since Schubert's later and equally celebrated song cycle Winterreise is also a setting of poems by Müller.

There are twenty songs in the cycle, around half in simple strophic form, and they move from cheerful optimism to despair and tragedy. At the beginning of the cycle, a young journeyman miller wanders happily through the countryside. He comes upon a brook, which he follows to a mill. He falls in love with the miller's beautiful daughter (the "Müllerin" of the title). She is out of his reach as he is only a journeyman. He tries to impress her, but her response seems tentative. The young man is soon supplanted in her affections by a hunter clad in green, the color of a ribbon he gave the girl. In his anguish, he experiences an obsession with the color green, then an extravagant death fantasy in which flowers sprout from his grave to express his undying love. (See Beethoven's Adelaide for a similar fantasy.) In the end, the young man despairs and drowns himself in the brook. The last number is a lullaby sung by the brook. The question remains: is the brook really the miller's friend or is it a fiend, like Mephistopheles in the Faust legend, who leads the miller to his downfall and destruction?

Included in this performance is a spoken Prolog and Epilog, read by Dietrich Fischer-Diekau. These are poems by Müller that weren't set on music by Schubert. One can argue if these poems should be included in Schubert's Müllerin cycle, but I included them anyway so you can judge for yourself if you like their presence or not.