Free Republic

Schubert died at 31. How much music did his early death deprive us of? Not a lot. Rossini died at 76, but give or take a few interesting items at the end of his life, posterity could just as well have cut him off at 37, when he stopped writing operas to concentrate on the more important tasks of eating and drinking. Life, long or short, looks to be simple addition. Factor in the matter of velocity, however, and we have a law of motion that might make Isaac Newton smile. Life spans measured in years don’t take into account...

Everly Brothers - When Will I be Loved 1983 | August 8, 2019 | Televisie Rewind

(Badfinger cover)Susanna Hoffs – Name of the Game (feat. Aimee Mann) | 4:45Susanna Hoffs | 57.6K subscribers | 226,653 views | October 19, 2021

“Truly,” Beethoven remarked in 1827, “in Schubert there dwells a divine spark.” Franz Schubert himself worshiped the older composer and was a torchbearer at his funeral. In the following year, he asked for one of Beethoven’s string quartets to be played at his own sickbed, days, if not hours, before he died at the age of thirty-one. Many of Schubert’s works contain homages to Beethoven: the Fate theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the animating motif of Schubert’s terrifying song “Der Zwerg” (The Dwarf). His “Auf dem Strom” (On the River, for voice, piano, and horn) takes up the theme...