Just as in his “Trout” Quintet (D 667), “Wanderer” Fantasy (D 760), and string quartet “Death and the Maiden” (D 810), in the flute variations on “Trockne Blumen” (D 802) Franz Schubert employs one of his songs as the thematic basis of an instrumental composition. “Trockne Blumen” (Dried Flowers) is the eighteenth song from the cycle “Die schöne Müllerin” (D 795), composed in autumn 1823.

In January 1824, before publication of all of the Müller songs that summer, the Theme and Variations in E...