We confess to having been unaware that Berg had even set this text! The things we learn.

From this you will probably have gathered that it is not it...

That is indeed a magnificent song is not it? We have often sung it on chilly evenings such as this in the company of a compliant pianist of course. It is one of the outstanding examples known to us of a manœuvre we have named the Reverse Picardy in which a piece ambles along seeming to have every right to end in the major and yet concludes after all on a minor chord.

Alas it is not the snatch in question but we are heartened by the move away from Berg! On the other hand the composer you have mentioned and whose birthday we share would not have been pleased to be mistaken for the true composer of the snatch.

Perhaps it might not be giving too much away to inform the Member however sadly that not only is it not Schubert's Limits of Humanity but neither is it anyone else's!

The sound you hear is that of a nail being hit firmly on the head.

It is indeed Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, his singularly effective setting of the line 'Die Öde verschlingt ihn' (emptiness swallows him up). Goethe wrote the text after visiting a student who had been plunged into depression after reading The Sorrows of Young Werther.

...who shall heal the pains of him whose balm turned to poison, who drank hatred of mankind from the abundance of love? If any sound from your psaltery can reach his ear, O father of love, refresh his heart!

Points to Member Inquisitor!

Puzzle 218: SendSpace or Rapidshare  

What a bustle! But - here is the fourth clue for puzzle 178 - Mr. Thompson withdrew when within a whisker of winning - and no other Member has snapped up the morsel that has been lying there exposed to all all day. Such are the ways of men sparrows and Members.

Here is Mr. Thompson: http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=2508.msg96199#msg96199

Also may we make a request? It will greatly simplify the calculation of points if Members always quote in their answers the message in which the puzzle was originally set - or at the very least cite the puzzle number. We experienced in the case of the recent Glass is it snatch for instance considerable difficulty in tracking down what Members were talking about. Sooner or later this will have to become part of the Rules we think.

I'd hazard a guess that No.178 is George Rochberg's Symphony No.3.