Franz Schubert

Schubert was born in Vienna and died there at thirty-one, having written more than a thousand works, including over six hundred songs. Much of his music was first heard at gatherings of friends called Schubertiads, where the baritone Johann Michael Vogl became a champion of his songs. He joined the sonata forms of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to long, singing melody. Schumann praised the "heavenly length" of his Ninth Symphony.

His harmony turns on sudden, distant key changes. In the B-flat Sonata, D. 960, the second theme of the first movement enters in F-sharp minor, far from the home key. Major and minor alternate inside one piece, as in the F minor Fantasia for four hands. In his songs the piano paints the scene: a spinning wheel in Gretchen am Spinnrade (written at seventeen), galloping triplets in Erlkönig, a rippling brook in Die schöne Müllerin. Winterreise sets twenty-four poems by Wilhelm Müller.

Several instrumental works grow from his own songs. The slow movement of Death and the Maiden is a theme and five variations on a song, and every movement of the Wanderer Fantasy starts from a variant of a phrase of Der Wanderer. The catalog also includes the Impromptus and Moments musicaux, the last three sonatas of 1828, the Arpeggione Sonata (written for a bowed guitar), the Quartettsatz, and three symphonies: the small-scale Fifth, the two-movement Unfinished, and the "Great" C major.