Franz Schubert Biography Quotes 24 Report mistakes

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Franz Peter Schubert was born on 31 January 1797 in Himmelpfortgrund, a suburb of Vienna, into a modest but intensely musical household. His father, Franz Theodor Schubert, was a schoolmaster who ran a parish school; his mother, Elisabeth, had been a housemaid before marriage and encouraged music at home. Among several siblings, the older brother Ferdinand Schubert became a capable musician and teacher who later helped preserve and promote Franzs works. The family home, with its mixture of discipline and music-making, provided the first environment in which Schubert absorbed the language of the Viennese Classical tradition.

Education and Early Formation
Schubert learned violin from his father and piano from his brother Ignaz before receiving instruction in organ and harmony from the parish choirmaster Michael Holzer. His precocious talents led to admission in 1808 to the Imperial and Royal City College (Stadtkonvikt) as a chorister in the court chapel, where he encountered orchestral scores and public performance at a high level. During these years he came under the encouragement and occasional instruction of Antonio Salieri, the leading figure in Viennese musical training, who recognized the boys extraordinary gift for melody and text setting. When his voice changed and he left the Stadtkonvikt, Schubert returned to his fathers school as an assistant teacher, composing in the evenings and on Sundays.

First Masterpieces and the Turn to a Composers Life
Even while teaching, Schubert produced works of startling maturity. In 1814 he set Goethes Gretchen am Spinnrade, a song whose whirling piano figuration and psychological acuity announced a new era for the Lied. The following year he wrote the dramatic ballad Erlkonig, later published in 1821 as his Op. 1 by Anton Diabelli. These achievements, alongside dozens of other songs, chamber pieces, and sacred works, convinced friends such as Josef von Spaun and Franz von Schober that Schubert should devote himself entirely to composition. With Schobers practical help and hospitality, Schubert gradually left schoolteaching behind.

The Circle of Friends and the Schubertiade
Schuberts career unfolded within a circle of devoted companions who sustained him socially and professionally. The baritone Johann Michael Vogl became the foremost interpreter of his Lieder, bringing them to salons and public attention; their partnership shaped Viennese taste for intimate song performance. Artists like Moritz von Schwind and Leopold Kupelwieser, and writers such as Eduard von Bauernfeld, were central figures at informal gatherings later called Schubertiades, where new songs, piano pieces, and chamber works were tried out among friends. Patrons and publishers including Diabelli and, later, Tobias Haslinger helped secure print circulation. Outside Vienna, the music-loving amateur Sylvester Paumgartner encouraged the Quintet in A major, the Trout, and contacts with the Esterhazy family led to periods of employment as music tutor at their estate in Zseliz.

Lieder: Voice, Poetry, and Narrative
Schubert composed more than 600 songs, transforming the Lied from simple strophic settings into a vehicle for drama, landscape, and psychological depth. He set texts by Goethe, Schiller, and Heine, and returned repeatedly to the poet Wilhelm Muller for his two master cycles. Die schone Mullerin (1823) traces youthful infatuation and heartbreak with luminous transparency; Winterreise (1827), stark and desolate, pushes song into existential territory. Among the most widely known individual songs are An die Musik, Die Forelle, Ave Maria (originally Ellens dritter Gesang), and Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise. Vogls advocacy was crucial: his performances helped audiences grasp the interplay of voice and piano that Schubert crafted with such sensitivity.

Instrumental and Sacred Music
Though long overshadowed by the songs, Schuberts instrumental output is vast. The symphonies include early works modeled on Haydn and Mozart and two towering achievements: the so-called Unfinished Symphony in B minor, D. 759, with its two completed movements of haunting lyricism, and the expansive Great C major Symphony, D. 944, whose rhythmic drive and architecture anticipate later Romantic symphonism. In chamber music he wrote string quartets of increasing power, notably the Rosamunde Quartet, D. 804, and Death and the Maiden, D. 810, as well as the late String Quintet in C major, D. 956, often cited as one of the supreme chamber works. The Trout Quintet, D. 667, blends songfulness with inventive textures. His final piano sonatas, including those in C minor, A major, and B-flat major, reveal a spacious, exploratory approach to form and harmony. Sacred compositions, from the early Mass in G to the Masses in A-flat, D. 678, and E-flat, D. 950, testify to his command of choral-orchestral writing. His efforts in opera and stage music, including Alfonso und Estrella, Fierrabras, and the incidental music to Rosamunde, encountered practical obstacles and made little headway in Viennas theaters during his lifetime.

Professional Struggles, Encounters, and Recognition
Despite the admiration of his circle, Schubert often found steady income elusive. He alternated between teaching, short-term posts, and intermittent publication revenue. Contacts with the wider musical world were meaningful: he revered Ludwig van Beethoven, and in 1827 he served as a torchbearer at Beethovens funeral in Vienna. The respect was gradually reciprocated; reports from Beethovens final months note his esteem for Schuberts songs. Schuberts own public breakthrough came late. A benefit concert in Vienna in March 1828, devoted entirely to his music, was warmly received and briefly eased his financial pressures. Haslinger promoted several major publications, and the breadth of Schuberts achievement began to be recognized beyond his immediate circle.

Illness and Final Year
From the early 1820s Schubert suffered recurrent illness, periods of depression, and physical setbacks that curtailed his activity at times. Nevertheless, his final years produced an astonishing concentration of masterpieces: Winterreise; the last three piano sonatas; the String Quintet; parts of the Great C major Symphony refined for performance; and many late songs gathered after his death as Schwanengesang by Haslinger. In the autumn of 1828 Schubert fell gravely ill while staying in Vienna with his brother Ferdinand. He died there on 19 November 1828. His death certificate cited typhoid fever. He was buried near Beethoven in the Waehring cemetery, a placement that symbolized the continuity Viennese contemporaries perceived between their musical legacies.

Posthumous Rediscovery and Influence
Much of Schuberts fame blossomed posthumously. In 1838 Robert Schumann encountered the manuscript of the Great C major Symphony in Vienna and alerted Felix Mendelssohn, who led an influential performance in Leipzig the following year, helping to secure Schuberts place in the symphonic canon. Franz Liszt popularized Schuberts Lieder through dazzling piano transcriptions, and later composers such as Johannes Brahms revered his harmonic language and lyric breadth. Publishers continued to issue previously unknown works, often guided by Ferdinand Schubert and friends like Spaun, ensuring that the catalog expanded steadily through the nineteenth century.

Style, Craft, and Character
Schuberts music marries inexhaustible melodic invention with subtle harmonic motion and a rare instinct for pacing. He could sustain long-breathed lyric spans while also fashioning movements where remote modulations feel inevitable. In song he integrated the piano as a character in the drama, not merely accompaniment. In chamber and instrumental works he balanced classical forms with a Romantic sense of color and atmosphere. Contemporaries described him as gentle, sociable, and wry, happiest among friends at the piano. Though he struggled to engage official institutions and the theater, his community of performers, patrons, and publishers, from Vogl and Schober to Spaun, Schwind, Diabelli, Haslinger, and Ferdinand, provided the network through which his music reached listeners.

Enduring Significance
Today Schubert stands as a central figure bridging Classicism and Romanticism. His Lieder shaped the art of song for generations; his chamber and piano music are staples of the repertoire; his symphonies broadened the expressive horizons of the orchestral tradition. The friendships that sustained him in life continued, after his death, to champion and transmit his art, ensuring that the quiet, steady labor of a Viennese composers son would echo far beyond the rooms where it was first heard.

Our collection contains 24 quotes who is written by Franz, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Music - Love - Live in the Moment.