Where Schubert got his musical genius from is a mystery. His father was a schoolmaster, whose first wife, Schubert's mother, was a cook. The couple had fourteen children and an income of $175. If this income is somewhat disproportionate to the size of the family, it yet is fortunate that they had fourteen children instead of only thirteen. Otherwise there would have been one great name less in musical history, for Schubert was the fourteenth.
He was born in Vienna in January, 1797. His thirty-one years--for this genius who so enriched music lived to be only thirty-one--were passed in poverty. His father was wretchedly poor, and his own works, when they could be disposed of at all to publishers, were sold at beggarly prices. Now they are universally recognized as masterpieces and are worth many times their weight in gold.
Shortly before he was twelve years old, Schubert, who had been singing soprano solos and playing violin in the parish choir, was sent to the so-called Convict, the Imperial school for training boys for the Court chapel. During his five years there his progress was so rapid that even before he was fourteen years old he was occasionally asked to substitute for the conductor of the school orchestra. Life, however, was hard. He had no money with which to buy even a few luxuries in the way of food to eke out the wretched fare of the Convict, nor music paper. Had it not been for the kindness of a fellow pupil and friend, named Spaun, he would not have been able to write down and work out his ideas.
When his voice changed, the straitened family circumstances obliged him to become an assistant in his father's school. He was able to bear poverty with patience, but not the drudgery of teaching, and he is said often to have lost his temper with the boys. Altogether, he taught for three years, 1815 to 1818; and while his work was most distasteful to him, his genius was so spontaneous that during his three years he composed many songs, among them his immortal "Erlking." Finally a university student, Franz von Schober, who, having heard some of Schubert's songs, had become an enthusiastic admirer of the composer, offered him one of his rooms as a lodging, whereupon Schubert, straightway accepting the offer, gave up teaching and from that time to the end of his brief life led a Bohemian existence with a clique of friends of varied accomplishments. In this circle he was known as "Canevas," because whenever some new person joined it, his first question regarding the newcomer was "_Kann er wass?_" (Can he do anything?)