Schubert was taught music at a very early age by his father, a schoolmaster, and became a chorister in the court chapel in Vienna at the age of eleven. His talents impressed his teachers and Salieri who was in charge of the choir. He then spent some years in his father's school as an assistant. During those years he wrote an enormous amount of music. in 1818, at the age of twenty-one, Schubert decided to dedicate himself to music and abandoned his teaching position. Schubert was a prodigious worker and is said to have once produced nine songs in a single day. Although never recognized when he was alive, other than within a small circle of friends, Schubert produced over 600 songs, ten symphonies, several operas including the wonderful Rosamunde, and a number of chamber pieces such as the Trout Quintet, which are some of the most enduring pieces in musical history. Contracting syphillis in his early twenties, Schubert's health steadily declined until 1828 when he contracted typhoid fever and succumbed at the early age of 31. |
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