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Müller's poems were published in 1820, and Schubert set most of them to music between May and September of 1823, while he was also writing his opera Fierabras. The work was published in 1824 under the title Die schöne Müllerin, ein Zyklus von Liedern, gedichtet von Wilhelm Müller, which approximately means, "The lovely maid of the mill, a song cycle to poems by Wilhelm Müller".
The cycle is occasionally referred to as the "Müllerlieder," the Müller songs, a term used by the composer once in a letter. This is not especially useful nomenclature, since Schubert's later and equally celebrated song cycle Die Winterreise is also to poems by Müller.
There are twenty songs in the cycle, around half in simple strophic form. Set in sequence, they tell the story of a young man wandering in the countryside. He follows a brook to a mill where he falls in love with the miller-maid. His love is not fully returned however, and he descends into despair after seeing a love rival, a hunter, at the mill. The last number is a lullaby sung by the brook in which the man has drowned himself. There is an overall movement through the cycle from cheerfulness and optimism to despair and tragedy.
Die schöne Müllerin is one of Schubert's most admired works, and it is frequently performed and recorded. A typical performance lasts around sixty to seventy minutes.
Schubert wrote one other song cycle, Die Winterreise (The Winter's Journey) (the songs collected as Schwanengesang are sometimes performed as a set, but were collected together after Schubert's death, and were not intended as a cycle by him).