ABSTRACT
Ever since Schubert's death on November 19, 1828, this expression appears over and over again in the writings of Schubert’s friends, critics, and biographers. This chapter explores some of the fundamental tropes of Schubert's mythology. The affectionate expression “our Schubert,” commonly used by Schubert’s family and friends, captures a possessiveness often directed toward beloved figures, although in Schubert’s case the proprietary qualities are especially pronounced. Unlike the careers of famous prodigies whose activities proved sufficiently interesting to warrant early testimony—most notably the phenomenon of the Wunderkind Mozart—the unfolding of Schubert’s less exceptional early career is not particularly well documented. Much of Schubert’s image was created in counterpoint to Beethoven’s. The nostalgia that colors Schubert’s posthumous reception - references to lost youth and to a golden past—already begins to punctuate the letters and journals of Schubert’s closest friends in the early 1820s, and reappears for the rest of his life.
