Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre , including more than Lieder art songs in German and other vocal works, seven complete symphonies , sacred music , operas , incidental music , and a large body of piano and chamber music. Born in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna , 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 , 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. He left the Stadtkonvikt at the end of 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.
In , Schubert was admitted to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member, which helped establish his name among the Viennese citizenry. He gave a concert of his works to critical acclaim in March , the only time he did so in his career.
He died eight months later at the age of 31, the cause officially attributed to typhoid fever , but believed by some historians to be syphilis. 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.
Today, Schubert is considered one of the greatest composers in the history of Western classical music and his music continues to be widely performed. Of Franz Theodor and Elisabeth's fourteen children one of them illegitimate, born in , [ 5 ] nine died in infancy. At the age of five, Schubert began to receive regular lessons from his father, and a year later he was enrolled at his father's school. I was amazed when Franz told me, a few months after we began, that he had no need of any further instruction from me, and that for the future he would make his own way.
