Schubert Quotes

“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

“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

“I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better."

"I'm afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“By leaving the organization of his concerts to others, Liszt sometimes fell victim to amusing errors. He once played in Marseille and included in the programme his arrangement of Schubert’s “La Truite” (“The Trout”). Owing to a printing error the piece appeared as “La Trinité,” and the unsuspecting audience sat through this bubbling music with quasi-religious reverence. When Liszt realized the mistake he got up from the piano and made an impromptu speech, asking the audience not to confuse the mysterious idea of the Trinity with Schubert’s trout, a helpful interjection which caused great hilarity.”
― Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847

“It's a sleepy song, isn't it? It pus me to sleep. But one just...keeps...playing...on and on and on, 'Ave Maria...!' Until the song reaches its natural close when the pianist dies of boredom. Then it's played at his funeral.”
― Allie Ray, Inheritance

“The mortal sin with Schubert is trying to play him perfectly. It makes no sense, none at all. You have to do the opposite, you have to--how shall I put it--it's more like you have to play him clumsily, a little tipsily, or better yet, drunkenly, helplessly, shakily, almost ignorantly, with an understanding, an inkling at least of an era in which people, even if they did cut loose and dance, still felt shame, still blushed. With Schubert there's a lot of keeping silent. Everything is directed inward. I knew enough people who got quieter and quieter when they drank; Schubert did it when he composed. This was someone who had no idea who he was, or at least he didn't know that he was endowed with great genius. I don't want to hear about immortality. You have to have it in your heart, and in your wrist.
...
Often, when I wake up, in the morning or in the afternoon after a little nap, and then especially, I have the feeling of having been dead, a strong, not even unpleasant feeling. That's how you should play Schubert.

[Suvorin]”
― Wolf Wondratschek, Self-Portrait with Russian Piano