Falk’s Reviews > Franz Schubert: A Biography > Status Update

"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)