In contrast to many contemporary composers, Franz Schubert was neither a virtuoso at the piano nor on any other instrument. His relationship to the piano appears rather pragmatic, in that he turned to the instrument when he was in demand: as a song accompanist and for dance music at Schubertiaden, as a four-handed partner or as a page-turner at larger events. He certainly did not see himself as a pianist, but first and foremost as a ‘composer’.This chapter explores Schubert’s public and semi-public appearances as a pianist by evaluating the contradictory statements about the quality and the quantity of his piano playing. It is concerned with his musical education, explores his piano playing in his later years and highlights his public appearance as a pianist. The comparison of Schubert’s biography with those of Viennese piano virtuosos and other composers sheds new light on the rapid development of the musical tastes of the Viennese bourgeois society in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Finally, the question of whether and to what extent the fact that Schubert was not present in the public concert life of his time diminished his career as a composer of ‘great’ works is discussed.

We need to step away from the foregone value judgements associated with the term Biedermeier, domestic music, and mass production – all encapsulated in the pejorative use of the term Hausmusik during the nineteenth century. This book uncovers the varieties music-making connected with the domestic music of this era – which are invariably left behind by modern musicologists in favour of a focus on individual, canonic, and original compositions. To understand opera in the Viennese home, it is helpful to consider the values that became attached to Biedermeier domesticity, especially social formation, domestic stability, and wholistic education. In revaluing Viennese opera arrangements of this era, it is also worth considering how they inspired public-sphere agency extending beyond domesticity. This chapter discusses quantitative aspects of piano-opera arrangement culture in Czerny’s Vienna and reasons for the boom in pianos, pianists, and associated publications. It then turns to qualitative considerations, looking at the ways in which these piano-opera arrangements promoted the agency of listeners, arrangers, performers, and women in particular.