Musical Quarterly 109, 1-2

In Müller’s poem “Der Neugierige” from Die schöne Müllerin, the protagonist’s fear of rejection is made manifest in the delaying tactics that he uses to postpone to the very last moment his asking the brook the crucial question: “does she love me?” The article proposes that Schubert’s music expresses not only the postponement aspect of Müller’s text—the external symptom of the protagonist’s fear of rejection, but also, through an imaginative use of enharmony, the implicit psychology through which he finally overcomes his anxiety and brings himself to the act of asking. Schubert’s psychological interpretation of the text resonates most interestingly with Müller’s diary entry for 23 October 1815, where the poet describes a situation strongly reminiscent of the inquisitiveness of “Der Neugierige.”