This is an eighteenth-century vignette, and very much a ditty for a Papageno. It is the type of song that Schubert gives to yokels in the same way that Shakespeare chooses rustics for his clowns. It is hardly surprising that the song is simple—on this single day in October 1815 Schubert composed seven others to texts of five poets! There are six verses of which we perform four. (Further adventures with an angry father and a broken ladder simply compound the lad's misery and the listener's impatience.)

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1989