A song cycle based on poems from Goethe's representative Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Schubert intermittently worked on setting poems from Apprenticeship to music starting in 1815, composing 26 pieces for 9 poems throughout his life, including unfinished works. Among these, the four songs in this cycle, written in 1826, were the last to be composed, with D 478 and D 877 being published during the composer's lifetime as Op. 12 and Op. 62 respectively.

 It is not clear whether the four songs in this cycle were composed together. Since sketches exist only for the first three songs, and the fourth song is a revision of "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" (D 403), composed in 1816, it has been suggested that the fourth song might have been added later at the publisher's request.

 This song cycle opens with the duet "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" (Only he who knows longing) as the first song. This was Schubert's sixth setting of this poem, but it was the first time he adopted the original poem's instrumentation of a duet between Mignon and the Harper. From the second song onwards, Mignon's solo takes over. "Heiß mich nicht reden" (Bid me not speak) and "So laßt mich scheinen" (So let me seem) are placed as the second and third songs, and the cycle concludes with "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt" sung again as a solo in the fourth song. Incidentally, the two central pieces were set to music by Schubert as a pair in 1821 (D 726 and D 727).

 In the original work, the girl Mignon is a mysterious being who does not reveal her identity, and is thus interpreted as a symbol of the romantic yearning hidden in the human heart. In this regard, it is understandable that Mignon was particularly beloved by Romantic composers and frequently featured in their works. In this song cycle, poems with the Romantic themes of longing and the suffering of its unattainability are placed at both ends, while Mignon's conflict in not being able to reveal her secret and her resignation in the face of death are sung in between.