The beginning

When I started this website in 2008, my main goal was to learn about Schubert's songs and life. That goal has been achieved, and since then my team and I have gained many insights into Schubert's life and work. One of the first things that concerned us was why Schubert's songs were sometimes listed with a D-number from the Deutsch catalog and sometimes with opus numbers after the title. And what about the many versions and arrangements?

We were able to answer these questions and many others, and we invite you to explore the contributions on this website and learn some interesting things about Schubert for yourself.

First, we had to realize the sheer amount of music Schubert wrote in his short life. You can count over 700 songs alone, including different versions.

Someone once told me (I don't know if it's true), that at the New Schubert Edition in Tübingen, someone was hired to transcribe Franz Schubert's songs by hand for a week, 8 hours a day, as a test. To transcribe, mind you, not to invent anew as Schubert did. This amount was then extrapolated to the years from which we have Schubert's compositions today and to the number of pieces written. It became clear that it was not possible to achieve this in 8 hours of daily work.

Therefore, Schubert seems to have composed and written extremely quickly and often for more than 8 hours a day. Take a look at one of the many digitized versions of his manuscripts that can be found on the internet. You can see in Schubert's handwriting how the notes flow onto the pages.