Gesang der Geister über den Wassern

It may be best known in the English-speaking world through a musical setting of 1820–21 by Franz Schubert (1797–1828) as a part song for men's voices and low strings (D.714).

In 1776, Goethe settled in Weimar, seat of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, and a centre of the intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment.

He gave it the title it now bears, made minor modifications to the wording, and changed its form from a dialogue between two spirits speaking alternately to a monologue.

Both poems are examples of Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress"), a German proto-Romantic aesthetic movement with an emphasis on subjective experience.

Victor Hehn [de] interpreted "Gesang der Geister" as an extended Romantic metaphor, in which the repeated ascent and descent of water between Heaven and Earth represents man's attempt to grasp both the mundane and the eternal, and the contrast between the restless cascade and the tranquil lake is between stormy passions and calm reflection, in a kind of mysticism or pantheism where these opposites blend to form a natural whole.

[1] Peter Härtling suggested that the poem could be read in the context of an attempted distancing by Goethe from Charlotte von Stein.

His first version, D.484, is for voice and piano, and has survived only as a fragment, which music critic Richard Capell called "a grievous relic ... mutilated by chance".

[19] Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has said that it is "one of [Schubert's] most magical pieces", and also that "[i]t should be listened to only at night, and will make you feel as if you are the last person in the universe".