Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

String Quintet in C Major, D. 956
String Trio in B Flat Major, D. 581

Vienna has always claimed Franz Schubert as peculiarly its own. Others, such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, had made their home there, but Schubert was a native of the city. Nevertheless his parents had moved to the capital from other parts of the Empire, his father from Moravia and his mother from Silesia. Schubert's father was a schoolmaster, a profession that it seemed likely his son might in the end follow. As a boy, the fourth of fourteen children of whom only five survived, he was trained as a choir boy of the Imperial Chapel, under Antonio Salieri, and, in consequence, as a pupil of the Staatskonvikt, where he took a leading part in orchestral activities, as he had in family chamber music. His first surviving compositions date from 1810, his second year of study.

When his voice broke, at the age of fifteen, Schubert was offered a scholarship for