He is supposed to have written his first compositions as early as at the age of eight or nine years. At this time he must have stuck out from the masses as an incredibly gifted pupil. Unfortunately only the written records of the "Canto in c" ("Gesang in c") for bass voice and piano have survived, without the lyrics though. At the age of ten, he became a chorister of the Royal Chapel in Vienna, which offered him the opportunity to enroll at Vienna's best school, the local Roman Catholic boarding-school. This is where he got to know most of his future friends.

When his mother died in 1812, his voice had just started breaking, which caused him to be eliminated from the boarding-school one year later. He started to have private lessons from Antonio Salieris - a famous composer of operas. At this time, Schubert had already written several pieces of all different kinds of music.

Finally, Schubert started to become a qualified assistant to the schoolmaster and finished a preparation course for teachers, which was followed by two years of practical work at the school of his father. These years are said to be his most fruitful ones - in the sense of music. In 1814 he wrote the song "Gretchen at the spinning-wheel" ("Gretchen am Spinnrad"), which marks the beginning of the modern German song.

He quit from his father's school in 1816 and started to work as a freelancing composer. He - together with one of his friends - moved in to the home of professor Heinrich Joseph Watteroth, whose students became Schubert's clients for which he wrote compositions.

From 1818 to 1824, Schubert worked for the family Esterházy in Zseliz (today's Slowakia). One year later, he met the painter Moritz von Schwind, who honored Schubert's life in his landscape paintings and portraits. When in 1820 the financial success still failed to materialize, his friends paid for the production of Schubert's first song books. His hope for the final breakthrough became stronger, when - on one of his little journeys with friends - he met Carl Maria von Weber in 1822, who promised to stage one of his works in Berlin ...which never happened.

The last part of his life was marked by the suffrage from illnesses, as well as by an enormous energy for work and creative power. At this time he moved several times, and in 1824 he did his longest journey. It took him almost six months and lead him to the upper parts of Austria and to the city of Salzburg.

Schubert celebrated his greatest success one year after Beethoven's death in 1828: He had organized a private concert, which did not only pay off financially, but which also was an instant success in term of music.