Schubert’s lifelong interest in literature, his close friendships with poets and his preference for lyric poetry in his prolific song settings suggest that his compositional language may be shaped as much by a literary imagination as by musical concerns. This article argues for a close correspondence between Schubert’s late instrumental style and Friedrich Schiller’s conception of the elegiac. In ‘On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry’ Schiller describes the sentimental poet as having to contend with two conflicting objects, the ideal and actuality, and to represent their opposition either satirically or elegiacally: whereas satire rails against the imperfections of present reality, elegy expresses longing for an ideal that is lost and unattainable. Paradoxically, however, the poet’s longing must take place in a flawed present; the elegiac thus projects not only a disjunction between divided worlds, but also a cyclic temporality in which memory and desire, past and future, are both entwined with the immediacy of present experience. In both Schiller and Schubert, this paradoxical temporal sensibility is often represented by patterns of returning, repetition and circularity. A close reading of Schubert’s Moment musical in A flat major, d780/2, illustrates how Schiller’s conception of the elegiac might be put into analytical practice.