To this day, Schubert remains something of an enigma, despite the wealth of literature about him. Did he write the 'philistine sonatas' attributed to him by Richard Wagner, or did he have the 'divine spark' which Beethoven recognized in him? Was he the 'cosy Biedermeier character' of Vienna, known to his friends as 'little mushroom', or was he something else--a genius unrecognized? Inspired by his own love of performing Schubert's chamber and instrumental works, the author goes behind the commercially exploited myth of the 'jolly drinking companion', to portray another Schubert, the man who stood between two worlds--the Classican and the Romantic--and who realised works of extraordinary meoldic beauty. He traces Schubert's development as man and musician against an historical and social framework; from his birth in 1797 in war-shadowed Vienna, through his prolific career as composter, to his death of typhus fever at the early age of thirty-one. The portrait emerges is that of the man revealed through his music: 'a complex, sympathetic, always very real human being, a difficult man and an honest artist'.