Trivia

His grave is located alongside the grave of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Wrote more than 600 songs.

Completed two movements of his so-called "Unfinished" Symphony (#8 in B minor) and orchestrated nine measures of a scherzo before setting the work aside. He did not die before he could complete it, he subsequently wrote a ninth symphony in C Major. It was first performed 35 years later.

Born at 1:30pm-LMT.

Schubert was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras.

Schubert has featured as a character in several films including Schubert's Dream of Spring (1931), Gently My Songs Entreat (1933), Serenade (1940), The Great Awakening (1941), It's Only Love (1947), Franz Schubert (1953), Das Dreimäderlhaus (1958), and Mit meinen heißen Tränen (1986).

In 1897, the 100th anniversary of Schubert's birth was marked in the musical world by festivals and performances dedicated to his music. In Vienna, there were ten days of concerts, and the Emperor Franz Joseph gave a speech recognising Schubert as the creator of the art song, and one of Austria's favourite sons. Karlsruhe saw the first production of his opera Fierrabras.

Schubert's music has also been featured in numerous post-silent era films, including Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), which features Ave Maria (D. 839); and the biographical film Carrington (1995), which features the second movement of the String Quintet in C major (D. 956), as well as the English version of The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1989), which features Serenade and Auf dem Wasser zu singen (D. 774).

Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music.

The Wiener Schubertbund, one of Vienna's leading choral societies, was founded in 1863, whilst the Gründerzeit was taking place. The Schubertbund quickly became a rallying point for schoolteachers and other members of the Viennese middle class who felt increasingly embattled during the Gründerzeit and the aftermath of the Panic of 1873. In 1872, the dedication of the Schubert Denkmal, a gift to the city from Vienna's leading male chorus, the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, took place; the chorus performed at the event. The Denkmal was designed by Austrian sculptor Carl Kundmann and is located in Vienna's Stadtpark.

In 1928, Schubert Week was held in Europe and the United States to mark the centenary of the composer's death. Works by Schubert were performed in churches, in concert halls, and on radio stations. A competition, with top prize money of $10,000 and sponsorship by the Columbia Phonograph Company, was held for "original symphonic works presented as an apotheosis of the lyrical genius of Schubert, and dedicated to his memory". The winning entry was Kurt Atterberg's sixth symphony.

In 1821, Schubert was admitted to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member, which helped establish his name among the Viennese citizenry.

Appreciation of Schubert's music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased greatly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works.

He left the Stadtkonvikt School at the end of 1813 and returned home to live with his father, where he began studying to become a schoolteacher. Despite this, he continued his studies in composition with Antonio Salieri and still composed prolifically.

Robert Schumann said: "It is pointless to guess at what more [Schubert] might have achieved. He did enough; and let them be honoured who have striven and accomplished as he did", and the pianist András Schiff said that: "Schubert lived a very short life, but it was a very concentrated life. In 31 years, he lived more than other people would live in 100 years, and it is needless to speculate what could he have written had he lived another 50 years. It's irrelevant, just like with Mozart; these are the two natural geniuses of music.".

Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers in the history of Western classical music and his work continues to be admired and widely performed.

In 1808, at the age of eleven, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school, where he became acquainted with the orchestral music of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Schubert was also familiar with instruments by Viennese piano builder Conrad Graf.

Schubert's life was covered in the documentary Franz Peter Schubert: The Greatest Love and the Greatest Sorrow by Christopher Nupen (1994), and in the documentary Schubert - The Wanderer by András Schiff and Mischa Scorer (1997), both produced for the BBC.

A feeling of regret for the loss of potential masterpieces caused by Schubert's early death at age 31 was expressed in the epitaph on his large tombstone written by Grillparzer: "Here music has buried a treasure, but even fairer hopes." Some prominent musicians share a similar view, including the pianist Radu Lupu, who said: "[Schubert] is the composer for whom I am really most sorry that he died so young. ... Just before he died, when he wrote his beautiful two-cello String Quintet in C, he said very modestly that he was trying to learn a little more about counterpoint, and he was perfectly right. We'll never know in what direction he was going or would have gone.".

He gave a concert of his works to critical acclaim in March 1828, the only time he did so in his career. He died eight months later at the age of 31.

From the 1830s through the 1870s, Franz Liszt transcribed and arranged several of Schubert's works, particularly the songs. Liszt, who was a significant force in spreading Schubert's work after his death, said Schubert was "the most poetic musician who ever lived.".

Among pianos Schubert had access to were a Benignus Seidner piano (now displayed at the Schubert Geburtshaus in Vienna) and an Anton Walter & Sohn piano (today in the collection of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum).

Schubert showed uncommon gifts for music from an early age. His father gave him his first violin lessons and his elder brother gave him piano lessons, but Schubert soon exceeded their abilities.

In July 1947 the Austrian composer Ernst Krenek discussed Schubert's style, abashedly admitting that he had at first "shared the wide-spread opinion that Schubert was a lucky inventor of pleasing tunes ... lacking the dramatic power and searching intelligence which distinguished such 'real' masters as J. S. Bach or Beethoven". Krenek wrote that he reached a completely different assessment after a close study of Schubert's pieces at the urging of his friend and fellow composer Eduard Erdmann. Krenek pointed to the piano sonatas as giving "ample evidence that [Schubert] was much more than an easy-going tune-smith who did not know, and did not care, about the craft of composition." Each sonata then in print, according to Krenek, exhibited "a great wealth of technical finesse" and revealed Schubert as "far from satisfied with pouring his charming ideas into conventional moulds; on the contrary he was a thinking artist with a keen appetite for experimentation.".

German electronic music group Kraftwerk has a track titled Franz Schubert on their 1977 album Trans-Europe Express.

The New York Times' chief music critic Anthony Tommasini, who ranked Schubert as the fourth greatest composer, wrote of him: You have to love the guy, who died at 31, ill, impoverished and neglected except by a circle of friends who were in awe of his genius. For his hundreds of songs alone - including the haunting cycle Winterreise, which will never release its tenacious hold on singers and audiences - Schubert is central to our concert life... Schubert's first few symphonies may be works in progress. But the Unfinished and especially the Great C major Symphony are astonishing. The latter one paves the way for Bruckner and prefigures Mahler.

In a survey conducted by the ABC Classic FM radio station in 2008, Schubert's chamber works dominated the field, with the Trout Quintet ranked first, the String Quintet in C major ranked second, and the Notturno in E-flat major for piano trio ranked third. Furthermore, eight more of his chamber works were among the 100 ranked pieces: both piano trios, the String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden), the String Quartet No. 15, the Arpeggione Sonata, the Octet, the Fantasie in F minor for piano four-hands, and the Adagio and Rondo Concertante for piano quartet.

Confusion arose quite early over the numbering of Schubert's late symphonies. Schubert's last completed symphony, the Great C major D 944, was assigned the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10, depending on publication. Similarly the Unfinished D 759 has been indicated with the numbers 7, 8, and 9. An even broader confusion arose over the numbering of the piano sonatas, with numbering systems ranging from 15 to 23 sonatas.

In the 20th century, composers such as Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, George Crumb, and Hans Zender championed or paid homage to Schubert in some of their works. Britten, an accomplished pianist, accompanied many of Schubert's Lieder and performed many piano solo and duet works.