certain shyness that he had. Although he never saw the opportunity to meet Beethoven, Vienna's master musician, he admired the man from afar and was a pallbearer at his funeral. It is well known that Franz Schubert's compositional output is colossal. He composed eleven Piano Sonatas and innumerable other piano pieces, chamber music, eight completed symphonies, a dozen operas and singspiels, an abundance of church music including six mass settings, and over six hundred lieder. He was capable of being extremely prolific. O. E. Deutsch's Thematic Catalogue lists over two hundred works for 1815 alone, and the following year over one hundred and sixty. Schubert's instrumental works show development over a long period of time, but some of his greatest songs were composed before he was 20 years old. In Schubert's songs the literary and musical elements are perfectly balanced, composed on the same intellectual and emotional level. Although Schubert composed strophic songs throughout his career, he did not follow set patterns but exploited bold and free forms when the text demanded it. Except for his early training as a child, Schubert the composer, was largely untrained and self-taught. His gift of being able to create melodies that contained both easy naturalness and sophisticated twists at the same time was unprecedented for his time. On this quality rests the reputation that music history finally gave Schubert. ...
