Schubert's dance compositions circulated in copies he himself made for friends (Brown, 218), and collections of his dances were published as early as 1821. He also contributed dances to "special Carnival anthologies every year from 1822 through 1828" (Hanson 155). Apart from three sets of dances for four-part strings, written in 1813-1814, Schubert left no orchestral arrangements of his dances, but the evidence that arrangements of his dances were made by others for a public casino ball in Linz in 1826 (Litschauer, 248) suggests that it is by no means impossible his waltzes and schottisches were heard in the great Viennese halls, too, as the thirst for music to accompany all-night dancing must have been extreme. (Josef Kenner, an acquaintance from Schubert's school days, writing in 1858, recalled that Schubert's waltzes were praised in Austria, though "not unanimously," but they became popular in Paris when arranged for strings (Deutsch 86).)
Still, among those generally considered to be major composers of the era, only Hummel left dances specifically identified with their use in the large halls (in his case, the Apollo-saal) (link to a page with scans of the first editions, keyboard versions). Given that the waltz collection, D 365, was the first of his compositions taken up by a commercial publisher, it seems likely that, had he lived into the 1830s, Schubert could have made a very comfortable living as a dance composer, had he chosen to do so; by then a combination of rapidly increasing venues and rising income in the middle classes made such specialized musical entrepeneurship rewarding (Otterbach, 231).
Schubert also heard the waltzes of Michael Pamer and Josef Lanner in taverns in the 1810s and 1820s–-one of Schubert's favorite nighttime haunts, the Café Rebhuhn, was Lanner's base, and Schubert is said to have enjoyed the performances (Deutsch 188). On music and dancing in Viennese restaurants and taverns, see Hanson, 169-76. By contrast, it was the Sperl where, a decade later, Chopin and Wagner heard and admired the waltzes of Johann Strauss, sr.
In a moment of all-too obvious bias towards the "master composers," Paul Nettl says of Schubert that "it was he who actually introduced the Viennese waltz as a gift to the world" (261). There is little if anything in the historical evidence to support such an extravagant claim. Schubert's waltzes may have been dear to his circle of friends (Litschauer), and even known to a limited extent outside that circle, but without any doubt Schubert's contemporary Lanner is the seminal figure in the development of the Viennese waltz as it was later known, not only because of the compositions he created but also because of his influence on Johann Strauss, sr. Once Lanner split his band into two groups (in 1829), with Strauss leading one of them, Strauss's reputation grew very rapidly, and before long he was the widely acknowledged patriarch of the waltz (whose history from that point on unfolded as much in concert–-and in the musical theater–-as in social dance). Strauss's concerts, being more fashionable, also attracted members of the upper-middle class (Weber, 110; Gartenberg, 95).
References:
Brown, Maurice. Essays on Schubert. London: Macmillan, 1966.
Deutsch, Otto. Rosamond Ley and John Nowell. trans. Schubert: Memoirs by His Friends. London: A. & C. Black, 1958.
Gartenberg, Egon. Johann Strauss: The End of an Era. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. Original edition published in 1974.
Hanson, Alice. Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Litschauer, Walburga. "Unbekannte Dokumente zum Tanz in Schuberts Freundeskreis." Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 42 (1993): 243-249.
Nettl, Paul. The Story of Dance Music. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947.
Otterbach, Friedemann. Die Geschichte der europäischen Tanzmusik. Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichson's, 1980.
Weber, William. Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna. London: Croom Helm, 1975.
