Few adolescent composers' works are heard as frequently today as are Schubert's. Posterity marvels at Mozart's precocious juvenile exploits and yet largely ignores his early compositions. Mendelssohn's teenage works number among his greatest, but those in the concert repertory remain relatively few. The youthful Schubert did not display prodigious gifts comparable to Mozart's and Mendelssohn's, nor did he cause any similar public sensation. Indeed, Schubert attracted little attention at all until 1820, his twenty-third year, by which time he had already composed two-thirds of his total oeuvre. Yet dozens of these early compositions eventually achieved repertory status.

The principal impetus for the retrospective discovery of Schubert's charming early symphonies, as well as of his string quartets, Masses, and works in a variety of other genres, was the prestige of the extraordinary songs he wrote as a teenager. With some exaggeration we might say that Schubert elevated the Lied to worthy and respectable status, while at the same time Lieder opened doors, aroused curiosity, made him famous, and secured his place in music history. In the 1820s and 1830s, references to him, no matter the context, usually used the label “the Lied composer Franz Schubert.” (Other catch phrases alluded, as in the case of Mozart, to his genius and early death.) Some writers simply tagged Schubert as the “composer of Erlkönig,” for long his single most famous work, and by mid century he was crowned as the Liederfürst (“Prince of Song”).