A friend sent this and 30 other Goethe settings to the great man himself in Weimar. Of the songs, the Goethe setting, 'Der Erlkönig', is the most remarkable and most famous. The following year was even more impressive: symphonies, operas (no less than four attempted in one year), chamber music and nearly 150 songs spilled from his pen, all written out of a determination to earn money from his music so that he could escape the need for earning it through his detested teaching. Indeed, that autumn his Mass #7 in F Major was performed to great acclaim, also his first lieder masterpiece, 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' (to words from Goethe's Faust) he was just 17. When he left the College in 1814, Schubert taught at his father's school, though this had little effect on his enthusiasm for composition. He held the latter in the greatest awe: 'O Mozart, immortal Mozart!' he wrote in 1816, 'what numberless consoling images of a better, brighter world have you engraved upon our souls!'. While at the College Schubert experienced his first opera performances, and also discovered the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Mozart. Always close to his father, Franz grew to love his stepmother Anna, who in later years helped him with loans of money. In 1812 his mother died: his father remarried the following year.

Schubert achieved satisfactory results in all subjects, but his musical abilities were recognized by all as exceptional. There he benefited greatly from contact with men such as Antonio Salieri and Phillip Korner, and wrote his first compositions. After a short interlude with a private teacher, Franz was accepted as a choirboy in the Court chapel which automatically admitted him as a pupil to the Imperial and Royal City College. One of five children out of nine who survived infancy he came from a modest schoolmaster's family living in Vienna's Lichtenthal district His father, Franz Theodor, was a keen amateur musician and quickly detected his son's talent, giving him violin lessons while the oldest brother taught him piano. For Schubert, an entire generation had to pass before his most substantial achievements saw the light of day.įranz Peter Schubert (JanuNovember 19, 1828) is one of the few 'Viennese' composers who was truly Viennese born and bred. Even Mozart, who probably had a harsher life and greater obstacles to overcome, was at least accorded a modicum of recognition in his own lifetime. Schubert's life is the quintessential example of the Romantic notion of the neglected genius who dies in obscurity.

Franz schubert bibliography