Painted portrait of Franz Schubert in his twenties, dark curls, round wire spectacles and a high dark neckcloth, against a deep moss green ground

Portraits · Composers · VII of XVII

Franz Schubert

1797–1828 · Composer

My productions in music are the product of the understanding, and spring from my sorrow…

Meine Erzeugnisse in der Musik sind durch den Verstand und durch meinen Schmerz vorhanden; jene, welche der Schmerz allein erzeugt hat, scheinen die Welt am meisten zu erfreuen.

Franz Schubert · diary, 1824
Read it in the source →

Franz Schubert wrote this in his diary in March 1824. He was twenty-seven, ill and low, and that month he was writing the Death and the Maiden quartet. His music, he wrote, came from understanding and from sorrow.

Three years later he began Winterreise.

Diary, March 1824 (the entry after the one dated 27 March). Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn, The Life of Franz Schubert, trans. Arthur Duke Coleridge, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1869), vol. II, p. 6. German: Kreissle von Hellborn, Franz Schubert (Vienna: Gerold, 1865), p. 323.

The originals

Pencil drawing of Franz Schubert by Leopold Kupelwieser, 1821: dark curls, round spectacles and a high neckcloth, facing the viewer
The likenessDRAWN BY LEOPOLD KUPELWIESER · 1821Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (Kupelwieser died 1862). Photomechanical reproduction of the drawing dated 10 July 1821, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musique, Est.SchubertF.001, via Wikimedia Commons. The bank's Commons file (Kupelwieser-Schubert_1821.jpg) is the same drawing at 390 px; Rieder's 1825 watercolour is only 798 px on Commons.
A handwritten page of song score headed Gute Nacht, for voice and piano, with the words written under the notes and Febr. 1827 at the top
Winterreise · Gute Nacht, 1827The first song of Winterreise, in his hand, dated February 1827 and signed. He set Wilhelm Müller's poems the year before he died.Autograph, Gute Nacht (Winterreise, D 911, no. 1), February 1827. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, via IMSLP. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.