Shaun Brown and Liam Viney present two of the great German song cycles. Beethoven was ever the innovator, and An die ferne Geliebte is credited as the first-ever-conceived song cycle, where each song is related by theme or narrative to form a cohesive whole. In these six songs (To the Distant Beloved) a solitary young man contemplates unrequited and absent love through the prism of nature, yearning for the object of his affection. Schumann’s cycle is more psychologically complex. The reflective relationship between the beauty of nature and the beauty of love in the opening song is short lived. The love affair is quite doomed, and the poet sings of regret, pleading, reconciliation, forgiveness. By the conclusion, the poet loses hope, and commits to drowning his sorry dreams of love in a coffin deep in the sea.