The Introduction and Variations on Trockne Blumen is the only work that Schubert composed for this formation, an absolute masterpiece far away from what until then, and then never again, was written for flute. The variation-form is normally display of brilliance and of confident security but Schubert took a sad song as theme that speaks only about bitterness, loneliness and pain. The theme is the heart of the single cycle Die schöne Müllerin, based on poems by Wilhelm Müller.
The cycle tells the story of a young miller who leaves his home and walking along the street by the stream, arrives at another mill where he finds a young and beautiful miller. The born feelings of love are immediately cut short by the arrival of a hunter who will easily conquer the heart of her.
Essential element is the water that flows, speaks and sings, incessant and monotonous turning of the mill. The water and the young man, both move against the perennial cyclicality, both without strong points, both „Wanderer“, wayfarers and pilgrims. But the water that flows is water that inexorably returns to itself and from the atmosphere of tragedy it is not possible to esacpe, not even in the last variation. „Der Mai ist kommen, der Winter ist aus“, last moment of hope not in life but in a faithful and timeless love, unique in escaping time and passing life because the lost love will not allow him to survive and the desire for death will be sung by the same stream.
Die schöne Müllerin is the earliest extended song cycle to be widely performed and togheter with his later Winterreise is the first of Schubert’s two seminal cycles.