Which one of these classical composers died the latest? Liszt, Schubert, Brahms, or Chopin?

Of these four great composers, Johannes Brahms was the last to pass away, dying in 1897. His death came at the very end of the 19th century, more than a decade after Franz Liszt (d. 1886) and nearly half a century after Frédéric Chopin (d. 1849). The first of the group to die was Franz Schubert, whose life was cut tragically short in 1828 at the age of just 31.

The timeline makes sense when you consider their respective generations within the Romantic era. Schubert was an early Romantic, a contemporary of Beethoven. Chopin and Liszt were born within a year of each other and became the superstar piano virtuosos of their time. Brahms, however, belonged to the next generation. Born in 1833, he revered the masters who came before him and was seen as a torchbearer for the more traditional, classical forms that composers like Beethoven had perfected.

Living until the cusp of the 20th century, Brahms became a revered elder statesman of music in Vienna. He was a living link to the high Romantic period, and his death is often seen as a symbolic closing of that chapter, just as new modern styles were beginning to emerge.