Composer | Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert was a prolific composer, writing some 600 lieder and nine symphonies, although he died at the age of 31. Aged 10, the young Schubert won a place in the Vienna Imperial Court chapel choir and quickly gained a reputation as a budding composer with a set of facile string quartets. After leaving school, Schubert briefly followed his father into the teaching profession, composing his first indisputable masterpiece, Gretchen am Spinnrade, at 17. While Schubert was still struggling to hold down a full-time teaching post, he composed 145 lieder (songs), the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies, two sonatas, and a series of shorter works for solo piano, two mass settings and other shorter choral works, four stage works, and a string quartet, in addition to various other projects. This period of intense creative activity remains one of the most inexplicable feats of productivity in musical history.

With little money and nothing much more than his “groupies” to support him, Schubert began to produce a seemingly endless stream of masterpieces that, for the most part, were left to posterity to discover, including the two great song cycles, Die Schöne Mullerin and Winterreise, the Eighth (“Unfinished”) and Ninth (“Great”) Symphonies, the Octet for Wind, the last three string quartets, the two piano trios, the String Quintet, the “Wanderer” Fantasy, and the last six sonatas for solo piano.