Status Updates From Franz Schubert: A Biography...

"Although opium is never mentioned by name in literature appertaining to Schubert and his friends, there are reasons for supposing that, for a period around 1822, they may have been smoking it." (125-6)

"He was essentially a composer of the Viennese classical school, indeed, the last great composer of that tradition. Despite his enormous respect for, and awe of, Beethoven, in particular of the music of the middle period, and despite the influence this music had on him, Schubert's real roots and affections lay with the Austrians Haydn and Mozart." (51)

Pain sharpens the understanding and strengthens the mind.

If Beethoven may be called the ideal listener for a troubadour, Schubert has a right to be called the ideal troubadour (Nietzsche)

I'll finish this eventually, but my GOD am i tired of reading conjectural stuff about how the slightest throwaway comment in a letter might have been indicative of Schubert's panoply of purported mental illnesses, addictions, or syphilitic side-effects.

Biographies which rely upon hypothesized posthumous diagnosis of psychological conditions sure are hard to take seriously.

Good but laden with conjecture so far.