Johann Schobert’s birth is given variously as about 1720, about 1735 or about 1740, and his birthplace as Silesia, Alsace or Nuremberg. In 1760 or 1761 he moved to Paris and entered the household of Louis François I de Bourbon, prince de Conti. In 1767 he went mushroom picking with his family at Le Pré-Saint-Gervais; a local chef told him the mushrooms were poisonous, a restaurant at the Bois de Boulogne told him the same, and a doctor acquaintance told him they were edible, so he made soup with them at home. Schobert, his wife, all but one of their children and the doctor died. The date given for his death is 28 August 1767.

He published many books of sonatas for the harpsichord, most with an accompanying part for one or more other instruments, along with harpsichord concertos, symphonies and the opéra comique Le Garde-Chasse et le Braconnier. He met Leopold Mozart in Paris during the family’s grand tour and was reportedly offended by Leopold’s remark that his children played Schobert’s music with ease; nevertheless the young Mozart absorbed him deeply, arranging several movements of his sonatas into his own early piano concertos. Dyneley Hussey, following Wyzewa and Saint-Foix, argued that it was Schobert who showed Mozart that a poetic stance was available to him, and that the four concertos built from his sonatas already contain what is usually called Mozartian — making Schobert, on that reading, the first of his real masters.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Schobert
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550279