With the compositions of Franz Schubert, a new sound entered music history: a cantabile tenderness, which, time and again, completely unexpectedly shifts into an evocation of dark depression and fateful, inescapable catastrophe. These abrupt mood swings mark many of his compositions, including what is arguably his best-known work, the Symphony No. 7, the so-called "Unfinished Symphony” because it remained a fragment. Embarking from the musical style of Haydn, Mozart and Salieri, his composition teacher for five years, Schubert increasingly expanded the classical traditions, and sought, in orientation on Beethoven’s radical self-realization, not to follow the taste of his time but rather his own intuition and creative power, thus both paving the way for the romantic epoch in music while limiting his own success to the regard of a small group of friends. His over 600 art songs and song cycles, such as "Die schöne Müllerin" or "Die Winterreise", which for a long time formed the foundation his fame, attest to his suffering from the shallowness of the world and his inner struggle between joy and pain. It took the composers of the next generation, such as Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, to discover his instrumental works and give them the credit they deserved.
born on January 31, 1797 in Vienna
died on November 19, 1828 in Vienna