Franz Peter Schubert

Franz Schubert was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras whose output of more than 600 lieder and a body of symphonic, chamber and piano works produced in a 31-year life made him one of the most-prolific composers in Western music. He was born on January 31, 1797, in Himmelpfortgrund, a suburb of Vienna, the son of a parish schoolmaster.

He entered the Stadtkonvikt (the imperial seminary) in 1808 as a chorister of the Imperial Court Chapel, where he studied under Antonio Salieri. From 1814 he taught for several years in his father's school while composing intensively. He set Goethe's poem Erlkönig in 1815, when he was 18, producing one of the foundational works of the German lied; that year alone he wrote about 145 songs.

He left teaching in 1818 to live as a freelance composer, supported by a circle of friends — the so-called Schubertiaden — who organized private performances of his music. His major works include the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (1823) and Winterreise (1827), the Trout Quintet (1819), the String Quintet in C major (1828), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor (the so-called Unfinished Symphony, 1822), the "Great" C-major Symphony No. 9 (1825–26), the late piano sonatas D. 958–960 and the Mass No. 6 in E-flat major.

He gave only one public concert of his own music, in March 1828. He died of typhoid fever in Vienna on November 19, 1828, at the age of 31, and was buried, at his own request, near Beethoven, whom he had revered. The "Great" C-major Symphony was discovered by Robert Schumann in 1838 and given its first performance by Felix Mendelssohn the following year.

His name Franz is the German short form of Franziskus, the German form of Francis, from the Late Latin Franciscus meaning "Frenchman" or "free man." It is a masculine name long popular in German-speaking Catholic Austria.