Cocktail Party Fact: During the time when Franz Schubert, dying of syphillis, was editing the proofs of this gloomiest and most despairing of his major works, he wrote to a friend asking him to send the latest books by his favorite novelist, James Fenimore Cooper!
Commitment Factor: About 70 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period. A song-cycle [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Schubert was one of the most facile song writers who ever lived. One rainy day, when he was restless, his friends gave him a book of poetry and he sat down and wrote the music for five songs.
Commitment Factor: About forty minutes.
Vital Statistics: Early Romantic Period. (1819) A five movement quintet for [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: There were many attempts to perform this greatest of Franz Schubert’s symphonies during his lifetime, all of them unsuccessful, owing to what was perceived at the time as its difficulty and its excessive length. The musicians in the London Philharmonic kept shouting “Where’s the tune?” during the wonderfully tuneful last movement. Question [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: There is no Symphony No. 7, so if you want to buy this, go by the nickname. It’s not uncommon to see a title like: Symphony No. 7 (8), and other confusing things, depending on how “accurate” the label is trying to be.
Commitment Factor: About 23 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Classical/Early Romantic Period [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: After its initial private performance, Franz Schubert’s Fifth Symphony was lost. More than half-a-century passed before Arthur Sullivan (he of Gilbert and Sullivan fame), rediscovered the manuscript and arranged for a public performance in London.
Commitment Factor: About 28 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Classical Period. A symphony in four movements.
What to Listen For: Schubert [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: It took Franz Schubert only 10 days to compose his last string quartet, which means that, assuming the man ate and slept like the rest of us, he must have written down this long, complex masterpiece pretty much as it came to him.
Comittment Factor: About 47 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Early Romantic Period.
What to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Composers have frequently composed some of their best work solely because of their friendship with certain musicians. Schubert composed these pieces for three friends who had started a piano trio: Ignatz Schuppanzigh, Joseph Linke, and Carl von Bocklet.
Commitment Factor: About 30-40 minutes per trio.
Vital Statistics: Early Romantic Period (1827). Two trios [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: More than 40 composers have set Goethe’s famous Erlkonig to music, but no one has ever surpassed this version by the 18-year-old Franz Schubert.
Commitment Factor: About 4 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Early Romantic Period. The official start of the Romantic Period, you might almost say. A song for voice and piano. Nothing quite like [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This might be the most psychoanalyzed composition in all of music. Just for starters, Franz Schubert composed parts of it in hospital after learning he had syphillis (whether contracted from a male or female partner no one knows). The doomed hero of the Wilhelm Muller poems is often seen as a surrogate [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven’s friend and staunchest supporter among the nobility, was also a very decent composer in his own right.
Commitment Factor: About 37 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period (1811). Composed for piano, violin and cello in four movements. Beethoven’s Trios are the greatest written for this combination of instruments, alongside those of Schubert, [...]