Gute Nacht (Winterreise, D. 911)

Schubert set the first twelve poems of Winterreise in February 1827, believing that was all Wilhelm Müller had written; when the complete cycle of twenty-four appeared he composed the rest in October, leaving the original order intact and adding the second half after it. His friends were disturbed by the songs. He told them he liked these more than anything he had written and that they would come to feel the same. He corrected the proofs during his final illness the following year. Gute Nacht opens the cycle with a man leaving a house at night.