A few composers have enriched this genre before. Had only 17 when he composed Gretchen am Spinnrade (Margarita at the wheel), one of the most perfect songs ever written and the following year he composed 145 songs. Poems looked across the field of contemporary German literature. Overall is represented ninety-nine lyric poets. The basic forms of Schubert's song is the song strophic, which uses the same melody in all the verses, or made from side to side, is the poem from beginning to end in a continuum dramatic or lyrical, often mixed these two forms. Schubert's songs exhibit infinite variety, large and short, lyrical and dramatic, simple and complex. He chose his poems and illustrated with his own magic words feelings through music, so that both elements take more force.
As a recitalist was observed from the beginning, in contact with the poetry of Goethe, Schubert's artistic personality. During the period 1814-1828 Schubertian Lieder history is characterized by constant development and styling of expressive media, without knowing setbacks or rupture, or asceticism, or falls, as it does to the quality of style, originality of invention, the depth of the poetic vibration. You can, at best, record, after 1820, a small decline in creative expression, attributable probably in part to the increased attention that the musician begins to devote time to instrumental music, in part, will also shape this field at large compositional structures: From these years date yet on the two major cycles Berlin texts by the poet Wilhelm Muller, Die Schone Mullerin (The beautiful miller, 1823: 20 Lieder) and Winterreise (Winter Journey, 1827: 24 Lieder), which have been designated by the term "lied" nouvelle "(novel in the form Lied) as they follow a narrative thread, but on domestic situations.