Schubert Quotes

Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

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

My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs. ~ Franz Schubert

...as a pianist, I can't say I was always a big fan of contemporary music. The challenge of late Beethoven, or Mozart, or Schubert seemed to me to be somehow greater or more worthwhile than that of learning difficult, ill-placed notes. To me, the kind of transcendence in the older pieces really was more interesting. That's not to say I didn't love the contemporary pieces I did play. I became very attached to the ones I learned, and I played them with pleasure and absolute commitment. It may be terrible to say this, but playing some of that music is like having a handicapped child. You love it all the more for the problems that it gives you. ~ Leon Fleisher

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

It's easier to interest a conservative audience in pushing the musical boundaries than to involve a young audience used to very noisy, assertive music in something like Schubert or Bach because the further back you go, the less bells and whistles there are. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas

Those who are born of grief give greatest delight to the outside world. ~ Franz Schubert

Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife. ~ Franz Schubert

I bring my classical training - some of it, but not all of it - and also my background and culture, to spirituals. And I try to leave room for that unpredictable factor, where the feeling of the song is allowed to come through. The same ethos can be applied to singing Mozart, or Schubert, or Bach. It's not just about what's on the page. ~ Kathleen Battle

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

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

A mathematician will recognise Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi or Helmholtz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognise, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert. ~ Ludwig Boltzmann

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love. ~ Franz Schubert

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

No one understands another's grief, no one understands another's joy ... My music is the product of my talent and my misery. And that which I have written in my greatest distress is what the world seems to like best. ~ Franz Schubert

Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history. ~ Martin Walser

A man endures misfortune without complaint. ~ Franz Schubert

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

No one really understands the grief or joy of another. We always imagine that we are approaching some other, but our lines of travel are actually parallel. ~ Franz Schubert

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

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

Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy. ~ Franz Schubert

The moment is supreme. ~ 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

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

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

When all hopes of recognition or honor have faded into distant memory, when purity of heart meets sorrow of mind, when all the world seems to walk in blindness and yet a man works without wearying for that which he loves ... only in this moment is passion truly understood ~ Franz Schubert

The world resembles a stage on which every man is playing a part. ~ Franz Schubert

The cause of freedom, in music as elsewhere, is now very nearly triumphant; but at a time when its adversaries were many and powerful, we can hardly imagine the sacred bridge of liberty kept by a more stalwart trio than Schubert the Armorer, Chopin the Refiner, and Liszt the Thunderer. ~ Hugh Reginald Haweis

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

Love is in the air these days, so we thought we'd give a try to make your day a little brighter. ~ Franz Schubert

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

Here and there, on the trees, some leaves remain. And I often stand deep in thought before them. I contemplate a leaf and attach my hope to it. When the wind plays with the leaf, I tremble in every limb. And if it should fall, alas, my hope falls with it." - Schubert ~ Roland Barthes

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

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

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

Above all things, I must not get angry. If I do get angry I knock all the teeth out of the mouth of the poor wretch who has angered me. ~ Franz Schubert

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger. ~ Philip Glass

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

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

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

I never want projects to be finished; I have always believed in unfinished work. I got that from Schubert, you know, the 'Unfinished Symphony.' ~ Yoko Ono

Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment? ~ Franz Schubert

I want you for always ... days, years, eternities. ~ Franz Schubert

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

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

Salieri was a pupil of Gluck. He was born in Italy in 1750 and died in Vienna in 1825. He left Italy when he was 16 and spent most of his life in Vienna. He's the key composer between classic music and romantic music. Beethoven was the beginning of romantic music, and he was the teacher of Beethoven and Schubert. ~ Cecilia Bartoli

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

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

In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles. ~ Johannes Brahms

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

That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging. ~ Haruki Murakami

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

In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair. ~ Alfred Brendel

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

Then shouts from the direction of the doorway. I started to black out, kneeing him in the crotch to no effect and clawing in panic at his hands, the flesh sloughing off under my nails.

Then suddenly he straightened, and looked toward the door.

Schubert came charging through, his service revolver raised. Two more officers came right behind.

He whirled away from them as if to hide his ruined face. But he didn't hide it from me! He looked at me with what passed for a fixed and hideous grin, although it might have been the death rictus of his facial muscles. His voice was like a tinny rasp, hollow and unreal.

"When the world starts to chew itself up alive, and spits out its own guts... be it on your conscience, Mr. Kolchak!"

He staggered away. Schubert was yelling for me to stop him. I made a grab for his coat but it came off in my hand. The acid.

He bolted for what had been an outside window, now boarded up, and smashed through it.

We could hear his wail all the way down. And a distant, echoing clatter of falling wood... and glass... and bones. ~ Jeff Rice

Then came that sigh. I wish I had had a tape recorder handy every time in my life that I heard a boy sigh at the outset of urination. What a lovely sound. So much satisfaction. Girls sigh far less often before they pee, and not with the same devotion, I think. If only I had such a recording of boys' sighs. I would lie on a pillow in the sunlight of the late afternoon, sometimes listening to Chopin, sometimes Schubert, and sometimes to the sighs, seriatim, of all the boys about to pee. ~ Matthew Sharpe

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning. ~ George Steiner

Chopin has done for the piano what Schubert has done for the voice. ~ Frederic Chopin

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

Leave off driving your composers. It might prove to be as dangerous as it is generally unnecessary. After all, composing cannot be turned out like spinning or sewing. Some respected colleagues (Bach, Mozart, Schubert) have spoilt the world terribly. But if we can't imitate them in the beauty of their writing, we should certainly beware of seeking to match the speed of their writing. It would also be unjust to put all the blame on idleness alone. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me. If, incidentally, they would use us poets for some other purpose, they would see that we are thoroughly and naturally industrious dispositions ... I have no time: otherwise I should love to chat on the difficulty of composing and how irresponsible publishers are. ~ Johannes Brahms

In a fit at the bookstore one day, I bought all my favourite composers' biographies: Schubert, Massenet, Wolf. I've still not had a chance to read them; it breaks my heart. But when you travel so much, you just can't take that many books with you. ~ Danielle De Niese

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti

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