Finckel Schubert Quotes

The moment is supreme. ~ Franz Schubert

A man endures misfortune without complaint. ~ Franz Schubert

The realm of classical music is so vast - not only in terms of style but of era, age and the purposes for which it was composed - it is an enormous art form. ~ David Finckel

If I were to run around the world playing just the cello concertos - and believe me, I love playing them - I would be counting my entire repertoire from year to year on my two hands ~ David Finckel

The zenith of virtuosity, a violinist like Jascha Heifetz, the supernatural in a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, these are performers who were so idiosyncratic and personal that to imitate them would be like filling somebody else's bottle with your wine. ~ David Finckel

Henry rested, possessed of many pills
& gin & whiskey. He put up his feet
& switched on Schubert,
His tranquility lasted five minutes. ~ Jerome W. Berryman

I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can. ~ Franz Schubert

Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief. ~ Franz Schubert

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children - oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either. ~ Edward Gorey

For Rostropovich, every single note that he played had a special kind of human meaning behind it. And this was something that he expressed and demanded of everyone who worked with him, who wanted to rise up to that level. ~ David Finckel

It sometimes seems to me as if I do not belong to this world at all. I deplore music that engenders in people not love but madness: which rouses them to scornful laughter instead of lifting their thoughts to God. ~ Franz Schubert

Why do you haunt me? You, like a tattoo on my tongue, like the bay leaf at the bottom of every pan. You who sprawled out beside me and sang my horoscope to a Schubert symphony, something about travel and money again, and we lay there, both of our breaths bad, both of our underwear dangling elastic, and then you turned toward me with a gaze like two matches, putting the horoscope aside, you traced my buried ribs with your index finger, lingered at my collarbone, admiring it as one might a flying buttress, murmuring: Nice clavicle. And me, too new at it and scared, not knowing what to say, whispering: You should see my ten-speed. ~ Lorrie Moore

Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people. ~ David Finckel

The greatest misfortune of the wise man and the greatest unhappiness of the fool are based upon convention. ~ Franz Schubert

I am in the world only for the purpose of composing. ~ Franz Schubert

Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote. ~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by. ~ Franz Schubert

O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life you have left in our souls! ~ Franz Schubert

For long years I felt torn between the greatest grief and the greatest love. . . . Whenever I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love. Thus were love and pain divided in me. ~ Franz Schubert

One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art? ~ Franz Schubert

In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic. ~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

The entire Habsburg landscape was given a deep, even coating of musical interpretation, whether Smetana and Dvorak in Bohemia or Haydn and Schubert in Austria or Bartok and Kodaly in Hungary. As soon as you head south from Hungary or the Carpathians this music stops. And with food, the greedy, complex and extravagant Habsburg world of layered cakes, a mad use of chocolate, subtle soups and fine wines goes off a cliff. This is obviously an enormous subject, ludicrously compressed here, but the very idea of such complex foods trickled down in the west from royal courts, famously with the development of the idea of the 'French restaurant' in the aftermath of the Revolution. Indeed, we all eagerly guzzle a range of court foods - with many Indian and Chinese restaurants in the west also serving essentially court Mughal or Qing banquet foods, albeit in mutilated forms. ~ Simon Winder

disapprovingly. The two of them resumed their evenings together in the salon, and William renewed his consumption of whiskey. "Can't we get rid of that Miss Witherspoon?" James groaned as he genteelly held the door to their apartments open for Gwyneira. Heather had been playing Schubert songs downstairs ~ Sarah Lark

Being an artist and a musician, I have witnessed the previous generation taking the art form, not as a way of making a living, but as a belief, an almost maniacal, sometimes insane devotion and commitment to communication. ~ David Finckel

here's why I take comedies seriously: they present and celebrate the world in which we survive our own and others' mistakes, follies, transgressions, and deep sins. However lightly, dimly, or bleakly, comedies revel in our survival - in the delaying of death and the staying of the curse. Comedies tell the story of ruined folk somehow avoiding ruin. ~ Melissa Schubert

In every interview I'm asked what's the most important quality a novelist has to have. It's pretty obvious: talent. Now matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don't have any fuel, even the best car won't run.The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can't control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn't enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that's it. Of course, certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory - people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends - have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn't the model we follow.
If I'm asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that's easy too: focus - the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment. Without that you can't accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you'll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing. I don't ~ Haruki Murakami

Mozart is a garden, Schubert is a forest in light and shade, but Beethoven is a mountain range, ~ Artur Schnabel

Tune, tune," said Porch briskly. He turned to Orson. "And is there a word for today?" Orson was the word person, spilling words out as if they were notes on a staff. "Rebarbative," said Orson promptly. "Causing annoyance or irritation. Mozart's rebarbative music causes me to want to throw up." Porch sighed. Orson preferred Schubert. ~ Patricia MacLachlan

I love dancing to the radio every morning, to start the day with such passion. Otherwise, life is too sad. My little daughter and I like dancing to classical music: Bach and Schubert. ~ Anna Mouglalis

If only your pure and clean mind could touch me, dear Haydn, nobody has a greater reverence for you than I have. ~ Franz Schubert

Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy. ~ Franz Schubert

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face. ~ Stephen Fry

I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature. ~ Anne Stevenson

With Schubert, a lot of the melodies are very simple, but he's in this groove. He's in touch with his heart. ~ Tom Wopat

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow. ~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

From the opening lines, Sleeping with Schubert is a hilarious, whimsical romp through the looking glass of a great musical mystery. The writing snaps, crackles, and pops with humor as Bonnie Marson makes Schubert a sexy, happening kind of guy who gives new meaning to our dreaming the impossible. ~ Jonis Agee

Schubert had arguably the same melodic gift as Mozart, but even less support. He didn't have the early exposure, never got to travel anywhere, and yet generated and amassed a body of work that grew and developed and is very profound. ~ Twyla Tharp