Over the next five years alone, in an inexhaustible surge of creativity, he wrote five symphonies, six operas, and 300 songs (Lieder). He left the college in 1813 to train as a teacher before returning home to work in his father's school. Under Salieri's tutelage he wrote an opera and a series of quartets by the age of 15. At 11 his serious musical education began when he won a choral scholarship to the Konvikt, Vienna's Imperial College. From his family he learnt the piano and violin, soon outstripping everyone else in the household. His shyness and lack of instrumental virtuosity contributed to the hardships he endured, but he was responsible for a magnificent body of work that is still appraised and appreciated today.īorn in the suburb of Lichtental, he was the fourth son of a schoolmaster. Of the great composers associated with Vienna - the others being Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven - Schubert was the only one born in the city, and the only one who failed to achieve international fame in his lifetime.
