1797–1828 · Austria · Classical
Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was an Austrian composer who stood at the very beginning of musical Romanticism. In his short life he wrote around 600 vocal works, nine symphonies and a large body of chamber and piano music. The site holds his songs for voice and piano at various levels of difficulty, along with a few solo piano pieces.
Franz Schubert was born on 31 January 1797 in a Vienna suburb. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, ran the parish school in Lichtental and was an amateur musician himself; of a large family only a few children survived, and just two of them — the future composer and his brother Ferdinand — went on to become professional musicians. Franz received his first music lessons from his father, while his elder brother Ignaz sat him at the piano: but within a few months Ignaz admitted he had nothing more to teach his pupil. From the age of six the boy attended his father's school, and then studied singing and organ with Michael Holzer, choirmaster of the Lichtental parish.
At eleven, thanks to his fine voice, Franz was admitted as a chorister to the imperial court chapel and, at the same time, to the Stadtkonvikt, a boarding school. There he became friends with Joseph von Spaun, Albert Stadler and Anton Holzapfel. Antonio Salieri, then Vienna's leading musical authority, began teaching him counterpoint and composition. Playing second violin in the Stadtkonvikt orchestra, Schubert came to know the symphonies and overtures of Haydn and Mozart, as well as Beethoven's early works, for which he felt a particular admiration.
Even as a teenager he showed a gift for composing: between 1810 and 1813 he produced an opera, a symphony, several piano pieces and songs. His schoolwork was uneven, and mathematics and Latin gave him particular trouble. Franz's voice began to break in 1813, and he left the choir, returning to his father's house; there he entered a teacher-training seminary, finished it a year later, and became his father's assistant at the same Lichtental school. In 1814 his first substantial independent works also appeared — the opera Des Teufels Lustschloss and a Mass in F major, whose premiere at the parish church was the first public performance of his music.
A circle of friends formed around the young Schubert: the official Joseph von Spaun, the amateur musician Anton Holzapfel, the poets Franz von Schober and Johann Mayrhofer, the poet and comic playwright Eduard von Bauernfeld, the painters Moritz von Schwind and Leopold Kupelwieser, the composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner, and the singer A. Milder-Hauptmann. They admired his music and from time to time gave him financial support. Gatherings among friends where his music was performed came to be called "Schubertiads".
In 1816 Schober invited Schubert to move into his mother's house: by then the composer had failed to get the Kapellmeister post in Laibach and had decided not to return to teaching at his father's school. In early 1817 Schober introduced him to the baritone Johann Michael Vogl, who began performing Schubert's songs in Viennese salons and became one of the leading promoters of his music.
Schubert's first success came from Goethe's ballad "Erlkönig", set to music in 1816. In January 1818 his first printed composition also appeared — the song "Erlafsee", included in an anthology edited by Franz Sartori. In March 1821 Vogl sang "Erlkönig" to great acclaim at a public concert. The publisher Anton Diabelli agreed to print Schubert's works for a commission; the first seven opuses to appear under this arrangement were all songs.
In early 1818 Schubert left his teaching post, and in July that year he went to Zseliz (now Želiezovce in Slovakia) — the summer residence of Count Johann Esterházy — to teach music to his daughters. He returned to Vienna in mid-November, and in 1824 he visited the Esterházys a second time.
In 1821 the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde admitted Schubert as a full performing member, which noticeably strengthened his name among the Viennese public, and in 1823 he was elected an honorary member of the music societies of Styria and Linz. In 1822 Schubert met both Weber and Beethoven; Beethoven reportedly noted the younger man's gift more than once. Schubert's health also declined in those same years — he fell ill in December 1822, and felt better after a course of hospital treatment in autumn 1823.
In the autumn of 1822 Schubert began the Symphony No. 8 in B minor — known as the "Unfinished" — and dedicated it to an amateur music society in Graz; in 1824 he handed over the two finished movements to them. He completed the first two movements in full, while the third, in the character of a scherzo, remained in sketches, and no sketches for a finale survive at all. Exactly why the composer did not finish the symphony is not known; it seems he intended to complete it.
The manuscript lay for more than forty years with the composer's friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner until the Viennese conductor Johann Herbeck found it; the first performance took place in 1865 — the completed first and second movements were played, and in place of the missing third and fourth, the finale from Schubert's early Third Symphony was performed instead. A year later the first two movements were published. Later, several completions of the symphony also appeared — among them one by the English musicologist Brian Newbould and one by the Russian composer Anton Safronov.
1825 proved especially successful: publication picked up pace, hardship eased somewhat, and in the summer, during a trip through Upper Austria, Schubert wrote a song cycle based on Walter Scott's poem "The Lady of the Lake" — one of its numbers was "Ellens Gesang III", later widely known as Ave Maria. That same year he composed the Piano Sonata in A minor and began the Symphony in C major, later called "the Great".
From 1826 to 1828 Schubert lived almost continuously in Vienna, apart from a brief visit to Graz. In 1826 he dedicated the "Great" symphony to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and received a monetary honorarium for it. The String Quartet No. 14 in D minor with variations on his song "Death and the Maiden", written in the winter of 1825–1826, was first performed in January 1826. The post of deputy Kapellmeister at the imperial court chapel, which he had hoped for in 1826, went instead to Josef Weigl.
In 1827 Schubert wrote the song cycle Winterreise and both sets of piano Impromptus. Beethoven's death affected Schubert deeply and may have pushed him toward new creative heights. Schubert gave the only public concert of his own works in his life on 26 March 1828 — the anniversary of Beethoven's death; it was a success and earned him 800 gulden, though public attention shifted to Niccolò Paganini's first Vienna performances.
In 1828 Schubert wrote the String Quintet in C major, his last three piano sonatas and the Mass in E-flat major. But his health declined: at the start of November 1828 he fell ill with headaches, fever, swollen joints and vomiting, and could barely keep down solid food.
Schubert died in Vienna on 19 November 1828, at the age of thirty-one; the official cause of death was given as typhoid fever. At his own wish he was buried near Beethoven's grave in the Währing cemetery — a year earlier Schubert had carried a torch at Beethoven's funeral. His friend, the poet Franz Grillparzer, wrote the epitaph on his gravestone. In 1888 the remains of both composers were reburied at the Vienna Central Cemetery.
Schubert worked in a wide range of genres: he wrote nine symphonies, including the unfinished Eighth, chamber ensembles — among them the string quartet Death and the Maiden —, piano sonatas, impromptus and musical moments, masses and other sacred works. But the largest part of his legacy is made up of songs for voice and piano — he left more than six hundred of these. Each song usually lasts one to five minutes and stands on its own, though there are exceptions: the cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise are linked by a continuous story and are usually performed complete.
The site's sheet-music library is made up mostly of songs for voice and piano. One can start at intermediate level with "Der Tod und das Mädchen" and "Heidenröslein"; the next step up consists of more extended, upper-intermediate pieces — "Wiegenlied", "An die Musik", "Der Musensohn" and "Du bist die Ruh". The hardest of the songs offered, such as the ballad "Erlkönig" and "Der Wanderer", are marked advanced. Separately, "Die Nacht" from Op. 17 is the most accessible piece on the site, at elementary+ level; from the same opus come "Jünglingswonne", "Liebe" and "Zum Rundetanz" at intermediate level.
Among the piano pieces on the site are both complete sets of impromptus, Op. 90 and Op. 142 (D.899 and D.935, four pieces each), Moment musical No. 3, three military marches and "Ungarische Melodie" D.817; all of them are marked advanced, as are the string quartet Quartettsatz in C minor and Psalm 23 for choir. Slightly easier, at upper-intermediate level, is the sacred work Tantum ergo for voice and orchestra, written in the same key as the Mass in E-flat major. Schubert wrote both sets of impromptus in 1827; like his sonatas and fantasies, they show a rich imagination and harmonic boldness.