This chapter explores Schubert’s Winterreise from a number of angles. First, under the heading of “Connecting Threads,” I consider overarching elements in text and music. Text and music do not necessarily coincide in all dimensions (such as their timeframe, or their structure), but may gain added power from being non-congruent. Secondly, I examine Schubert’s deployment of the “fingerprints” of his personal style: these too contribute to the intense impact of Winterreise.1 In setting the twenty-four poems of the finished cycle, Schubert not only created an alliance between music newly conceived for the purpose and Müller’s words; he also, importantly, formed an alliance of the words with core features of his compositional style at a ripe stage of its development.