ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some unsolved conundrums about Franz Schubert's life, personality and music. Schubert was very short, as Schober's well-known caricature of Schubert and Vogl illustrates and his nickname 'Schwammerl' confirms. Listening to his music, one can sense in Schubert a man emotionally wise beyond his years. A 'long, short-short, long short-short' dactylic rhythm could be said to be Schubert's 'signature rhythm', occurring innumerable times throughout his oeuvre and from all stages of his composing career. For much of his life Schubert shared confidences and lodgings with a succession of male friends, such as Mayrhofer, Senn and Schober. In the poems about death which he chose for his song settings, death is seen as a welcome release from anguish, something warm, comforting, and almost maternal. While this was indeed a common view of Romantic poets at the time.
