The neglect that Franz Schubert suffered for most of the 19th century now seems incredible. None of his symphonies was performed during his lifetime (except, perhaps, for readings at private concerts Schubert held himself) and not one was published until some fifty years after his death. In 1827, a music dictionary was published in which Schubert’s name did not even appear. Part of the problem, perhaps, was that Schubert (unlike Mozart or Beethoven) was not a virtuoso performer on any instrument, and he found no other means of promoting himself. And despite the fact that Schubert is widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, writer of melodies, most of Europe was already headed toward the complexity and ambiguity of the high Romantic era.

Schubert was born in Lichtenthal, a suburb of Vienna. At the age of ten he was sent to study with the local church organist, Michael Holzer, who later wrote, "If I wished to instruct him in anything fresh, the boy already knew it. So I gave him no actual tuition but merely talked to him and watched him with silent astonishment." Every moment Schubert had to himself was spent composing, and in 1812 Salieri accepted him as a student. Two years later, to Salieri’s astonishment, the 17-year-old presented him with the 341 pages of his fully orchestrated first opera. Unlike Beethoven, composing came naturally to Schubert, which may be why he, like Saint-Saëns, is commonly regarded as having produced an incredible amount of music, but no revolutionary effect. The son of a schoolmaster who had settled in Vienna, Schubert was educated as a chorister of the imperial court chapel and later qualified as a schoolteacher, briefly and thereafter intermittently joining his father in the classroom. Schubert spent his life largely in Vienna, enjoying the company of friends, but never holding any position in the musical establishment or attracting the kind of patronage that Beethoven had twenty years earlier. Schubert’s final years were clouded by illness, as the result of a syphilitic infection, and he died in 1828, leaving much unfinished. Franz Schubert’s gifts had been most notably expressed in song, and his gift for memorable melodies infused all his work.

From 1814 to 1817, Schubert worked in his father’s school, spending all his spare time composing. He gathered around him a close and influential circle of friends, including the rich and rather disreputable Franz von Schober, the melancholy poet Johann Mayrhofer, and the operatic baritone Michael Vogl, for whom Schubert composed many of his more than 600 songs. Receiving only sporadic performances in concert halls, Schubert and his friends held private "Schubertiads" to raise money, which Schubert desperately needed.

In the summer of 1818, he moved to Zseliz in Hungary to take up the position of music tutor to the daughters of Count Johann Eterházy. He returned to Vienna a year later, receiving two opera commissions from the Court Theatre. He received his first publishing agreement for his Erlkönig, but these better fortunes soon fell apart. In 1822, the Court Theatre came under Italian management as all Vienna was in frenzy for Rossini. Schubert immediately lost two commissions. Around this time, he also contracted syphilis, then rife in Vienna, and began to fail in 1823. Despite his illness and subsequent depression, he continued on creatively until his death at the age of 31.

He received his dying wish, to be buried next to Beethoven, despite the following comment which Schubert wrote in his diary in 1816: "An eccentric element dominates the works of most contemporary composers. This element of eccentricity is almost wholly due to Beethoven, who unites the tragic with the comic, the agreeable with the repulsive, the heroic with howls, the holiest with harlequinades. Who not only unites them but mistakes the one for the other without distinction, makes men mad instead of dissolving them in love, moves them to laughter instead of lifting them up to God." This was most likely to due the influence of Schubert’s teacher (and Beethoven’s sometime teacher) Salieri who often warned his students against the "excesses" of Beethoven. Schubert later changed his feelings about Beethoven’s music and even wrote: "After Beethoven, who can do anything more?"

The Rondo, is one of Schubert’s most charming works for piano. Its elegance is matched only by the marvelous melodies of his songs.