When Franz Schubert was dying, at the untimely age of 31, you'd think he wouldn't have had the energy to compose what would become one of the world's most famous song cycles. But despite ill health and being perennially penniless, Schubert was a born workaholic, scribbling his compositions anywhere and everywhere, on anything from café napkins to those old brown paper wrappers you'd get at the butcher's. In the 10 months before his death on November 19, 1828, Schubert set 24 poems by poet/librarian Wilhelm Muller to music; the result... More >>>