Schubert: where to start with his music

The most poetic musician who ever lived? It’s hard to disagree with Liszt’s appraisal of Schubert, who, in his short life, used his astonishing gift for melodic and harmonic invention to create many enduring masterpieces

He composed more than 600 songs – taking the art of writing German Lieder to a new plane – as well as seven completed symphonies, chamber music and piano sonatas. Yet there’s a sense that Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was still just beginning to exploit his immense gifts and to develop further the musical language he had inherited from Beethoven, which he combined with an astonishing gift for melodic and harmonic invention. Schubert was never a great performer, and he was always a freelance composer, relying on what he could earn from commissions and fees. Only a fraction of his music was published in his lifetime, and it was only after his death that the greatness of his achievement was recognised internationally.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2GkfZYA