Goethe's harper plays upon a well-established ‘type’ of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the quintessentially Romantic character of the elderly (and therefore timeless) bard who, in imparting his ballads of ancient folklore, is revered as sole caretaker of a common past heritage that has been all but obscured in the mists of time. The enormous appetite for this supposedly ‘timeless’ art is most famously illustrated by the ease with which James McPherson was able to pass off his own work as that of the 3rd-century Gaelic bard Ossian, thereby initiating a veritable craze for the alleged outpourings of this semi-mythical figure, a vogue in which Schubert certainly played his own part.

Wilhelm Meister undoubtedly contributed to this image, as is well illustrated by the account of the Harper's initial appearance at the inn, where he is welcomed and fêted by all present. The ballad which he sings (set by Schubert, and discussed in Chapter 1) epitomizes this popular conception of the bard as something of a Promethean figure, appreciated, applauded and even rewarded by kings, yet nevertheless transcending such worldly concerns, living ultimately only for the art which destiny has conferred upon him to safeguard.

In September 1816, presumably about the same time as he set to work on his first projected cycle of Harper's songs, Schubert chose to set a poem by Mayrhofer, Liedesend (Song's end) D473, that reads rather like a twisted and sour version of Goethe's ballad, and which perhaps indicates both Mayrhofer's and Schubert's recognition of the essential fragility of this rather idealized concept.