Abstract
Eduard Mörike’s Das Verlassene Mägdlein is among the most commonly set texts by lieder composers of the nineteenth century. Among these, the settings of Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf are two of the finest. This paper briefly explores the circumstances in which these two settings were written by their respective composers; Schumann’s travels and the death of his son in 1847 and Wolf’s Liederjahr of 1888. Following is a comparative analysis of the musical content of both settings which takes into account melody, rhythm, form, accompaniment, and text setting. The finding is that Schumann’s more restricted contrapuntal style is as suitable a setting as Wolf’s highly dissonant, post-Wagnerian masterpiece.
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