Mignon, the mysterious girl in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, sparked Schubert’s imagination again and again with her longing for warmth and homeland, her insatiable thirst for the absolute. In Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, Ellen yearns for protection, peace of mind, and security — and Schubert’s music underscores how impossible these very things are to find in times of war. In one of Schubert’s darkest songs, the gravedigger questions the meaning of human existence; the Shepherd on the Rock wanders through nature in an effort to overcome his loneliness; and the dwarf pines for the Queen, agonizing over the taboo of loving her. Nowhere is pain more beautiful than in music — especially in the music of Schubert, who, as his contemporary Heinrich Heine would say, makes our “hearts bleed most pleasantly.”

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