Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert helped establish the lieder (song cycle) for voice and piano and became one of the most prolific, if short-lived, composers of the Romantic era. Born outside of Vienna in 1797, Schubert was taught piano and violin by his father and older brother. His singing voice won him entrance to the Imperial Chapel Choir of the Royal Seminary, which would years later transform into the Vienna Boys Choir. At the seminary, Schubert also studied composition with Antonio Salieri. At the age of sixteen, Schubert wrote his first symphony and left the seminary. Although he held only one musical position - teacher to the children of a Hungarian nobleman - for a short time in his life, Schubert composed a large body of works for orchestra, chamber, choral, piano, and song cycles. He wrote more than 600 lieder, many of them incorporating the Romantic poetry of Goethe, Heine, Klopstock, and Schiller. Today's best known Schubert song cycles include Die Schöne Müllerin (twenty songs, 1823) and Die Winterreise (twenty-four songs, 1827) set to the poems by Wilhelm Müller. His symphonies include such major works as the Fifth in B Flat (1816), Eighth in B Minor ("Unfinished Symphony", 1822), and the Ninth in C Major (1828), which was only discovered by Robert Schumann ten years after Schubert's death, and given its premiere by Felix Mendelssohn in 1839. Schubert's Quartet in D Minor ("Death and the Maiden" 1824), and his Quintet in A Major ("The Trout" 1819) are also often performed. Schubert died from the effects of syphillis in 1827, at the age of thirty-one.
