Franz Schubert (jan 1, 1797 – jan 1, 1828)

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Alongside the prominently public worlds of opera and symphony, a more private and domestic culture of music making was cultivated in the nineteenth century, primarily represented by songs, piano pieces, and chamber music. This was the sphere in which Franz Schubert first made his name and fame. During his lifetime Schubert was best known for smaller works, including Lieder, piano character pieces, and domestic genres that are now less common, such as part songs and piano duets, although he also composed many larger works, including operas and symphonies.

Composers had written LIeder for centuries, but the Romantics elevated the genre. Schubert's first masterpieces as a teenager were songs to texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose poems he set most often. Some, like Heidenroslein, evoke a folk style and are in simple strophic form, with the same music or each stanza of a poem. Schubert's most famous work is Erlkonig, a setting of a Goethe ballad about a boy riding throguh a storm at night in the arms of his father and being seduced by an evil forest spirit, the Erlking.

Schubert's most important large compositions for piano include the "Wanderer" Fantasy and his final piano sonatas. During his last years he concentrated on large-scale works, producing his two best-known symphonies, No. 8 and 9, as well as significant chamber works, such as the Piano Trio in Eb Major, Op. 100, which premiered in Vienna on the first anniversary of the death of Beethoven, whom Schubert worshiped.

Because of the politically repressive regime of Prince Clemens von Metternich, Composers, writers, and artists now had to contend with oppressive censorship. Concerts and various other social activities required official approval to take place, which is one reason that so much of musical life centered around the home. In Schubert's case the private sphere of music making even spawned its own name: Schubertiades, which were salon music.

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