Franz Schubert: songs that tell stories
Franz Schubert lived in Vienna and wrote music very fast. He is most famous for his songs: a singer tells a story while the piano paints the scene. He also wrote symphonies, piano pieces and music for small groups of players.
In this lesson
A young musician in Vienna
Schubert was born in 1797 in Vienna, in Austria. His father was a school teacher, and the family made music together at home. When he was about eleven, he won a place as a choir singer at a special school in Vienna, where he also played in the school orchestra.
He wrote music all his life, and he stayed close to his friends in Vienna. He died there in 1828, when he was only 31 years old.
Friends and music
In 1808, Schubert joined the choir school in Vienna. From about 1812, the famous composer Antonio Salieri gave him lessons in how to write music.
When he was 17, he wrote his song about a girl at her spinning wheel, based on a poem by Goethe. The next year, he wrote the song "Erlkönig" at the age of 18. According to a friend, he wrote it in just a few hours.
In the early 1820s, his friends began to hold evenings of music and talk to hear his new pieces. People later called these evenings Schubertiads.
Songs with a story
Schubert wrote more than 600 songs. Songs like these, for one singer and a piano, are often called art songs. The piano is not just in the background. It helps tell the story, by sounding like a spinning wheel, a galloping horse or a running stream.
His tunes are easy to remember and feel natural to sing. That is why people still love them today.
Try listening for
These four pieces show how Schubert makes music tell a story.
- Gretchen am Spinnrade
- Listen for the piano going round and round like a spinning wheel while the singer sings about her feelings.
- Erlkönig
- Listen for fast, repeated piano notes like a galloping horse, and one singer who acts out several different characters.
- Trout Quintet, fourth movement
- Listen for the same tune coming back again and again, each time dressed up in a new way.
- Unfinished Symphony
- Listen for a quiet, mysterious start in the low strings, and how a singing tune grows out of it.
Listen to "Gretchen am Spinnrade" and tap your finger in a steady circle with the piano, like a wheel. Then try tapping fast and bumpy, like a horse, while someone plays "Erlkönig".
Some pieces to know
Schubert wrote music for voices, for piano and for groups of instruments.
- Songs
- More than 600 short songs for a singer and piano, each one like a tiny story.
- Trout Quintet
- A piece for five players from 1819, with a part based on his own song about a fish.
- Unfinished Symphony
- A symphony from 1822 that he never completed, yet people play it all the time.
- Impromptus
- Piano pieces that feel free and spontaneous, like music made up on the spot.
Meanwhile, around the world
- 1812Fairy tales in a book
In Germany, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of their fairy tales.
- 1822Reading ancient Egyptian writing
In France, Jean-François Champollion announced how to read the picture-signs called hieroglyphs.
- 1824A choir joins a symphony
In Vienna, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was first played, with singers in the last part.
- 1825A railway with steam engines
In England, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened, with steam engines pulling coal wagons.
- 1827The oldest photograph
In France, Nicéphore Niépce made the oldest photograph that still survives, a view from his window.
Piano sound: Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0).