Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras, celebrated above all for his more than 600 songs (Lieder), which fused poetry and music into an intimate new art form. [1] Despite a career cut short by his death at the age of 31, he produced a vast body of symphonies, chamber music, piano sonatas, and sacred works. [1] Much of his output went unpublished in his lifetime and secured his reputation only in the decades after his death. [2]
Early life and education
Franz Schubert was born on 31 January 1797 in Himmelpfortgrund, then a suburb of Vienna, into a musical family; his father, a schoolteacher, gave him his first lessons on the violin, while an elder brother taught him the piano. [1] A gifted treble, he won a place in 1808 as a chorister in the Imperial Court Chapel, which brought free schooling at the Stadtkonvikt and exposure to the orchestral repertoire of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. [2] He also studied composition with Antonio Salieri. [1] After his voice broke he trained briefly as a teacher and worked as an assistant in his father's school, an occupation he soon abandoned to devote himself entirely to music. [1]
Songs and vocal music
Schubert composed with extraordinary fluency, producing more than 600 secular vocal works alongside operas and sacred music. [3] His songs set verse by Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and other poets, treating the piano as an equal partner to the voice; early masterpieces such as Gretchen am Spinnrade and Erlkönig, written while he was still a teenager, transformed the German Lied into a serious art form. [1] The two great cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise trace unified emotional journeys across dozens of individual songs. [2]
Instrumental works
Alongside his songs Schubert wrote instrumental music of lasting importance. The Symphony No. 8 in B minor, left with only two completed movements, became known as the Unfinished, while the expansive Symphony No. 9 in C major, the Great, anticipated the symphonic scale of the later Romantics. [1] His chamber works include the Trout Quintet, the String Quartet in D minor known as Death and the Maiden, and the String Quintet in C major, and his piano sonatas and shorter Impromptus remain central to the repertoire. [2]
Final years and legacy
Schubert spent nearly his entire life in and around Vienna, sustained by a close circle of friends whose gatherings, later called Schubertiades, were devoted to his music. [1] He revered Beethoven, and after his own death in Vienna on 19 November 1828, at the age of 31, he was buried near him at his own request. [1] Comparatively little of his work had been published during his lifetime, and much remained unknown until composers and scholars, among them Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, championed it in the following decades. [2] He is now regarded as one of the foremost composers of the nineteenth century and a pivotal figure in the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era. [2]
