Franz Schubert

Born in a Vienna suburb in 1797, Schubert outpaced his father's violin lessons and his brother's piano instruction almost immediately. At eleven he entered the Stadtkonvikt school, absorbing Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. He left at sixteen to train as a schoolteacher but kept studying composition with Salieri, writing prolifically on the side. By 1821 he'd joined the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member; in March 1828 he gave a concert of his own works to acclaim — the only one of his career. Eight months later he was dead, officially of typhoid fever, though some historians suspec…