Quotes & Sayings About Schubert

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

Schubert Impromptus that Louise Bogan gave me - Opus 90 and Opus 142, Gieseking. — May Sarton

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

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

As she went on with her labour, she became aware that she had Schubert's Erl-King going around in her head. It wasn't the ideal music for the job. Normally, Pannonique programmed her brain to play symphonies that have her the energy indispensable for such physical labour-Saint-Saens, Dvorak-but now that heart-rending Lied stuck in her skull and sapped her strength. — Amelie Nothomb

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

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

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

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

At first I thought I should be a second Beethoven; presently I found that to be another Schubert would be good; then gradually, satisfied with less and less, I resigned to be a Humperdinck. — Engelbert Humperdinck

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

There are two contrary impulses which govern this man's brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals. — Franz Schubert

Three tendencies can be observed in the estimation of dreams. Many philosophers have given currency to one of these tendencies, one which at the same time preserves something of the dream's former over-valuation. The foundation of dream life is for them a peculiar state of psychical activity, which they even celebrate as elevation to some higher state. Schubert, for instance, claims: "The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter." Not all go so far as this, but many maintain that dreams have their origin in real spiritual excitations, and are the outward manifestations of spiritual powers whose free movements have been hampered during the day ("Dream Phantasies," Scherner, Volkelt). A large number of observers acknowledge that dream life is capable of extraordinary achievements - at any rate, in certain fields ("Memory"). — Sigmund Freud

Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason - or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart - or maybe we should say the work discovers you. Schubert's Sonata in D Major is sort of the same thing. — Haruki Murakami

I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived ... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert. — George Gershwin

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

There are eight girls in the house in which I am living, and practically all of them are good looking. You can realize that I am kept busy. — Franz Schubert

I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done. — 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

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

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've just been playing the Trout Quintet on the phonograph. Listening to the andantino makes me want to be a trout myself. You can't help rejoicing and laughing, however moved or sad you feel, when you see the springtime clouds in the sky, the budding branches, moved by the wind, in the bright early sunlight. I'm really looking forward to the spring again. In that piece of Schubert's you can positively feel and smell the breeze and hear the birds and the whole of creation shouting for joy. — Sophie Scholl

Why does God endow us with compassion? — Franz Schubert

There is no such thing as happy music. — 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

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

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

What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart! — Franz Schubert

I know we planned to walk down to Schubert's for burgers, but can we go upstairs first?' She raised her eyebrows. 'What for?' 'Because I need to be inside you. Like ... now. — Lacey Alexander

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner. — Colm Toibin

Anyone who loves music can never be quite unhappy. — Franz Schubert

Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house. — 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

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

I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion. — Franz Schubert

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

Truth will flourish in fantasy, only to wither and die in what you are pleased to call reality. — Bernard 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

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

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

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

No, I don't know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they 'should' like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle. — Terry Teachout

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

The writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score. — Ethel Smyth

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

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

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

The manager is to be blamed who distributes parts to his players which they are unable to act. — Franz Schubert

A singer whose ear is singly directed to the melodic aspects of a Brahms lied or a Verdi aria lacks perception of the musical web from which the melodic line emerges; the composer's intent may remain unrealized. to sing Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, or Strauss lieder without an understanding of underlying harmonic structures is to vocalize on them, not to conceive of them musically and emotionally. — Richard Miller

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

Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach. — Karen DeCrow

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

We were at the Schubert Theater for two years. And we were the first act. — Eydie Gorme

I sing in languages that I speak. So when I'm singing a Schubert song, I know precisely what every word means and, you know, when it was composed and who was the poet and all of that and whether Strauss or Wagner or French Belioz, Duparc or Debussy or whatever. — Jessye Norman

You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves. — Franz Schubert

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

People have called it different things over the years, fight, attitude, determination, but I've always called it hope. The simple truth is, though they abused your body, what they did in no way diminished your power. You are not less because of what happened to you, if anything you are more. You have gained a strength many will never have, a resiliency unknown before, and while you will always fight the demons that now have free range inside of you, you will do it with skills and power few can share. — Kim Schubert

Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Berg imply a type of pianist who is intellectual. That's not always associated with female soloists. — Jeffrey Tate

Approval or blame will follow in the world to come. — Franz Schubert

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too. — Gian Carlo Menotti

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

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

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

Once, when I remarked that she looked like a disoriented bandicoot, she leapt up from the piano bench and beat me within an inch of my life with a rolled-up piano sonata by Schubert. Ophelia has no sense of humor. — Alan Bradley

To my mind and ear, there is simply nothing that compares to the musical sophistication of a late Beethoven, Bartok, Schubert or Brahms work for minimal forces. — Leonard Slatkin

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

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

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

The moment is supreme. — Franz Schubert

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach. — Isabelle Huppert

Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters. — Carson McCullers

I planted some jokes in my wedding. Like, the organizers asked me to select music. So when I approached wife at the ceremony, they played the second movement from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, which is usually known as the "portrait of Stalin." And then when we embraced, the music that they played was Schubert's "Death and the Maiden." I enjoyed this in a childish way! But marriage was all a nightmare and so on and so on. — Slavoj Zizek

The guitar is a wonderful instrument which is understood by few. — Franz Schubert

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

My music wasn't written by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Schubert. It's written by God and me. They go "a one and a two and up." We start on the downbeat. Bam! And that's where we got them. — James Brown

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

A man endures misfortune without complaint. — Franz Schubert

The reason why Schubert is celebrated so much today, lies rather in the fact that there has been nobody else like him - not before him, not after him. — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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

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

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

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 people listen to my music, I hope that they will notice that if you take a piece by a composer like Schubert, the major and the minor triad is an extermely important thing not merely as harmony, but in creating melodic lines. Schubert is always walking up and down with arpeggios on C, E, G and so forth. I am not doing anything different really, except using a different system of harmony. — Elliott Carter

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

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

Rather, I believe that it is very good, if, with the aid of his songs, we can be reminded, among other things, of the social conditions under which Schubert had to work. — Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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

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

...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

With a heart filled with endless love for those who scorned me, I wandered far away. For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love. — Franz Schubert

As to ... old composers like Schubert or Beethoven, I imagine that, while modern music expresses both feeling, thought and imagination, they expressed pure feeling. And you know all day sitting at work, eating, walking, etc., you have hundreds of feelings that can't be put into words. And that is why I think that in a sense music is the highest of the arts, because it really begins where the others leave off. — C.S. Lewis

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

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

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

A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel. — Ibn Warraq

O thrice-romantic Master, would you not rather take long walks in a blooming cherry tree alley with your friend and listen to Schubert in the evenings? Would you not rather write by candlelight with a quill pen? Like Faust, would you not rather sit over a retort in the hopes of crafting a new homunculus? That is your desination, there. A house awaits you, with an aging servant; the candles are already lit and will soon extinguish as dawn inevitably arrives. Take this path, Master, and farewell! I must go. — Mikhail Bulgakov