Althought the notions of improvement and reconception are both vital to the discussion of the previous chapter, the relationship between the apparently similar settings of Meerestille, written just a day apart from one another, perhaps speaks more loudly of the former than of the latter. The present chapter, on the other hand, examines the relationship between two very different settings of a poem, separated from one another by more than seven years. The resetting constitutes a ‘reconception’ of the poem with respect to the earlier one, yet compositional residues from that previous song resurface in the later one. Such residues serve as simple (and perhaps unconscious) stimuli to the composition of this later song, yet they may sometimes function as more significant allusions to the previous reading that have an important impact upon the hermeneutic content of its successor.

For Schubert and his poets, water was a powerful metaphor for time in both stasis and motion. In Meerestille, the image of the boundless sea served as the starting point for a depiction of eternity, or timelessness; in Am Flusse (By the river), the poem presently under discussion, the image of the river, neatly demarcated by its boundaries and characterized by clear motion in a specific direction, serves as a potent symbol for the inexorable passing of time. Schubert's friend Mayrhofer expressed the concept succinctly in the poem Am Strome (By the river), which the composer himself set to music (D539, 1817): ‘Ist mir's doch, als sei mein Leben/ An den schönen Strom gebunden’ (It seems to me as if my life?/ Is bound to the beautiful river).