Franz Schubert

FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT, whose life span ended just one year after Beethoven's death, would probably have remained in the shadow of his great contemporary, had his oeuvre not carried the perceptibly different style of a new era. His lyrical conception of the world and the subtle, psychologically nuanced conveyance of his innermost self have cleared in many directions the road of Romanticism in European music. And if his music was known in his lifetime only to a very small circle of admirers in Vienna, in subsequent decades interest in his legacy has grown, thanks to artists such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms, who have discovered and acclaimed his genius as one of the most significant composers of the early nineteenth century.

In his short 31-year life, he created around 600 songs, ten symphonies, liturgical opuses, operas and theatrical music, miniatures for home musical performances, dozens of piano and chamber works.