Schubert Quotes

• 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

  Morning, Men, Play

  Language and Silence preface (1967)

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• 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

  Moving, Yield, Despair

  Alfred Brendel (2015). “Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures”, p.167, Biteback Publishing

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• Chopin was the first piano composer who knew exactly how to make piano sound reach fullness, radiance and grandness. What to regard and what, by all means, to avoid. Chopin was keenly aware of the overtones and he did take care of them so artfully.

  Frederic Chopin

  Voice, Piano, Done

  "Famous Pianists on Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann" by G. Henle Verlag, 2010.

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• 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

  Eye, Perfect, Listening

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jan 07, 2015

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• 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

  Spiritual, Men, Ideas

  Ibn Warraq (2010). “Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays”

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• 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

  Lying, Facts, Reason Why

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• 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

  Jesus, Inspiration, Dark

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• 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

  Unfinished Work, Symphony, Want

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

  Anne Stevenson

  Literature, Loyal, Austen

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• 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

  Beautiful, Song, Believe

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• Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Needs, Brahms, Publish

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• But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

  Hands, Live For Today, Alive

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• 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

  Heart, Simple, Groove

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• 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

  Spring, Clouds, Wind

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• 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

  Children, Thinking, Trying

  Edward Gorey (2001). “Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey : Interviews”, Houghton Mifflin

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• 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

  Two, Written

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• 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

  Thinking, Play, Pieces

  "Ira Glass Interviews His Cousin, Composer Philip Glass". www.wbur.org. September 21, 1999.

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• 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

  Morning, Sunday, Musical

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Self Esteem, Firsts, Would Be

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• 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 Žižek

  Symphony, Wife, Way

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• 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

  Creating, People, Important

  Interview with Joel Bons, as quoted in notes for album "Elliott Carter: Homages and Dedications" (CD booklet, p. 17), 2003.

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• Mozart is a garden, Schubert is a forest in light and shade, but Beethoven is a mountain range.

  Artur Schnabel

  Garden, Mountain Ranges, Light

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• 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

  Sexy, Dream, Sleep

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• 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

  Art, Thinking, Imagination

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• 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

  Piano, Soul, Way

  "Isabelle Huppert (I)". Interview with Christopher Cook, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2001.

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