At the Esterhazy country estate of Zelesz, he heard many Hungarian melodies sung or played by the gipsies, or by servants in the castle.  He has employed some of these tunes in his first set of Valses.  In his present position he had much leisure for composition.  Indeed Franz Schubert’s whole life was spent in giving out the vast treasures of melody with which he had been so richly endowed.  These flowed from his pen in a constant stream, one beautiful work after another.  He wrote them down wherever he happened to be and when a scrap of paper could be had.  The exquisite song “Hark, Hark the Lark” was jotted down on the back of a bill of fare, in a beer garden.  The beautiful works which he produced day after day brought him little or no money, perhaps because he was so modest and retiring, modestly undervaluing everything he did.  He had no desire to push himself, but wrote because impelled to by the urge within.  So little did he sometimes value his work that a fine composition would be tucked away somewhere and quite forgotten.  His physical strength was not robust enough to stand the strain of constant composition.  Then too, when funds were very low, as they often were, he took poor lodgings, and denied himself the necessary nourishing food.  If he could have had a dear companion to look after his material needs and share his aims and aspirations, his earthly life might have been prolonged for many a year.  With no one to advise him, and often pressed with hunger and poverty, he was induced to sell the copyrights of twelve of his best songs, including the “Erlking” and the “Wanderer,” for a sum equal to about four hundred dollars.  It is said the publishers made on the “Wanderer” alone, up to the year 1861, a sum of about five thousand five hundred dollars.  It is true that “everything he touched turned to music,” as Schumann once said of him.  The hours of sleep were more and more curtailed, for he wrote late at night and rose early the next day.  It is even said he slept in his spectacles, to save the trouble and time of putting them on in the morning.

In Schubert’s boyhood, the music of Mozart influenced him most.  This is seen in his earlier compositions.  Beethoven was a great master to him then, but as time went on the spell of his music always grew stronger.  In 1822, he wrote and published a set of variations on a French air, and dedicated them to Beethoven.  He greatly desired to present them in person to the master he adored, but was too shy to go alone.  Diabelli, the publisher, finally went with him.  Beethoven was courteous but formal, pushing paper and pencil toward his guest, as he was totally deaf.  Schubert was too shy to write a single word.  However he produced his Variations.  Beethoven seemed pleased with the dedication, and looked through the music.  Soon he found something in it he did not approve of and pointed it out.  The young author, losing his presence of mind, fled from the house.  But Beethoven really liked the music and often played it to his nephew.