Franz Schubert

During his short life, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) produced an astonishing amount of music. Yet who was the man who composed such an amazing succession of masterpieces, so many of which were either entirely ignored or regarded as failures during his lifetime?

This biography, now available in paperback, fully describes the background to Schubert's personal world - including his family and friends , his school and college, and the flourishing and influential musical societies. For the first time, his mildly manic-depressive temperament, which was partly responsible for social inadequacies, professional ineptitude, and idiosyncracies in his music, is explored at some length, together with his uneven physical decline (after contracting syphilis), his hedonism, and the cause and circumstances of his death at the age of thirty-one.