Hugo Wolf's compositions were written in an important transitional period in western classical music when the bounds of tonality were being stretched. Composers were creating increasingly chromatic and dissonant works, yet these pieces were still based around a single, unifying tonal center. In recent years, theorists have contended that compositions of this period often contain two tonics in a "directionally tonal" relationship, wherein the piece begins in one key and finishes in another. However, such an interpretation seems to diminish the structural importance of the transition between the two "keys." In Hugo Wolf's An den Schlaf, this transitional passage reveals a harmonic progression that intrinsically binds the two keys centers in forming a large- scale auxiliary cadence. In addition, using the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century conceptions of key associations in which certain keys portray intrinsic affects and moods, the key centers create a "harmonic narrative" that parallels the text. By contrasting progressive analytical interpretations with a retrospective view, understanding the structural role of the transition between the two key centers, and by utilizing traditional key associations, harmonic and narrative connections are revealed that provide a deeper understanding of the piece.