Die Schöne Müllerin, D.795, is a song cycle for voice and piano, completed in 1823 by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828). The cycle consists of twenty songs on texts by Wilhelm Müller, about a young man wandering happily through the countryside, falling and failing in love with a miller's beautiful daughter, and taking his own life, in typical romantic fashion It is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed. The average playing time is 40 minutes (AllMusic). I have a number of versions, of which I have a slight preference for the one by Fritz Wunderlich and Hubert Giesen on a Deutsche Grammophon CD.
