Piano Classics, Book No. 2 - Page 262 Franz Peter Schubert (1797 - 1828) was...(More)

Piano Classics, Book No. 2 - Page 262 Franz Peter Schubert (1797 - 1828) was an Austrian composer. Although he died at the age of 31 he composed over one thousand pieces of music. Some of his works are among the greatest music ever written. He wrote wonderful melodies. There were other great composers who lived and worked in Vienna: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but Schubert is the only one who was born in Vienna. He was the last great composer of the Classical music period, and one of the first of the Romantic period. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As the first and last pieces in the Opus 142 set are in the same key (f minor), and the set bears some resemblance to a 4-movement sonata, these Impromptus have been accused of being a sonata in disguise, notably by Robert Schumann and Alfred Einstein, who claim that Schubert called them Impromptus, and allowed them to be individually published to enhance their sales potential. However, this claim has been refuted by contemporary musicologists such as Charles Fisk, who established important differences between the set of Impromptus and Schubert's acknowledged multi-movement works. This Impromptu is a theme with variations. The main theme resembles a theme from the incidental music that Schubert composed for the play Rosamunde, which also appears in the second movement of his 13th string quartet.(Less)