Born at Lichtenthal, near Vienna, in 1816 he gave up teaching to compose, and in 1818 was appointed music teacher to the Esterházy family on their estate in W Hungary. Very shortly he was back in Vienna, where he composed prolifically and lived a Bohemian existence. He was only 31 when he died, but his musical outpout was prodigious - he composed over 950 works, most of which were unpublished until after his death.

Greatest of the ten published symphonies are the incomplete eight in B minor (the Unifinished) and the Great in C major (1829). He wrote chamber and piano music, including sonatas and fantasias, but he is best loved for his Lieder (songs), of which he wrote over 600, combining the romantic expression of emotion with pure melody.

Schubert never achieved widespread fame during his lifetime, though he inspired intense loyalty and affection. Schubert's music is different from that of most other great composers. Unlike Mozart, Beethoven and especially Wagner, Schubert appears unaware of his own genius. It was only in the last years of his life he that he realised the importance of writing down all that he had composed.

Since Schubert died young, years before his music became famous, everything we know about him as a person is from the memoirs of his friends who outlived him. These sentimental pictures portray Schubert as "a character out of Viennese operetta - a Bohemian artist, poor but happy." Most of Schubert's friends never married; it seems reasonably certain that he "travelled in a circle that was predominantly gay", "where he found easy and vain relief, in friendships not all worthy of him". Therefore, despite the limited information we have about his life, it seems very likely that he also was gay.