The Czech composer Zdenek Fibich (1850–1900) had a keen interest in classical German literature. It therefore comes as no surprise that he had already set songs to texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe while still a student at the Leipzig Conservatory.

Between 1865 and 1871 he composed 16 songs on texts by this famous German author for voice and piano. Ten of them have survived: the song “An den Mond”, dating from 1869, and nine further songs from Goethe’s novel “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre” were composed immediately after Fibich’s return to Prague in 1871. All ten now appear here in a single-volume Urtext edition edited by Barbora Kubecková.