19th Century Comments and Quotes

George Bernard Shaw [yes, that one]

At the Crystal Palace there is an understanding among the regular frequenters that a performance of Schubert's symphony in C is one of the specialities of the place. The analytic programme of it is one of Sir George Grove's masterpieces - and Mr Manns [the conductor] always receives a special ovation at the end. The band rises to the occasion with its greatest splendour; and I have to make a point of looking pleased, lest Sir George should turn my way and, reading my innermost thoughts, cut me dead for ever afterwards. For it seems to me all but wicked to give the public so irresistible a description of all the manifold charms and winningness of this astonishing symphony and not tell him, on the other side of the question, the lamentable truth that a more exasperatingly brainless composition was never put on paper. [The World, 23 March 1892]

Poor Schubert ... here lays out ... with a conviction that if he hurries fast enough he will presently overtake Mozart and Beethoven, who are not to be caught up in a thousand miles by any man with second-rate brains, however wonderful his classical endowment. [The World, 23 March 1892]

Johannes Brahms

My love for Schubert is a very serious one, probably just because it is not a fleeting fancy. Where is genius like his, which soars aloft so boldly and surely, where we then see the first few enthroned? To me he is like a child of the gods, who plays with Jupiter's thunder, albeit also occasionally handling it oddly. But he plays in such a region, at such a height, to which the others are far short of raising themselves... [Letter from Brahms to Schubring, June 1863]

The true successor to Beethoven is not Mendelssohn, whose artistic cultivation was quite incomparable, also not Schumann, but Schubert. It is unbelievable, the music he put in his songs.

There is no song of Schubert's from which one cannot learn something. {Brahms to Gustav Jenner, quoted in his book Johannes Brahms als Mensch, Lehrer und Künstler. Studien und Erlebnisse, Marburg, 1905]

James William Davison

Perhaps a more overrated man than this Schubert never existed. He has certainly written a few good songs. But what then? Has not every composer who ever composed written a few good songs? And out of the thousand and one with which Schubert deluged the musical world it would indeed be hard if some half-dozen were not tolerable. And when that is said, all is said that can justly be said about Schubert. [Musical World, June 13th 1844. Quoted in John Reed's article Schubert's reception in nineteenth-century England in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, edited by Christopher Gibbs]

Antonin Dvorak

In originality of harmony and modulations, and in his gift of orchestral colouring, Schubert has had no superior. [from his article Franz Schubert in the Century Magazine, July 1894]

He introduced the song into the symphony. [from his article Franz Schubert in the Century Magazine, July 1894]

I do not hesitate to say that, greatly as I esteem Schubert's songs, I value his instrumental works even more highly. Were all of his compositions to be destroyed but two, I should say, save the last two symphonies. [from his article Franz Schubert in the Century Magazine, July 1894]

George Eliot

Schubert too wrote for silence : Half his work lay like a frozen Rhine till summers came and warmed the grass above him. Even so : his music lives now with a mighty youth. [Source unknown. Quoted by Eva Mary Grew in her Franz Schubert A sequence of Sonnets and a Prose Anthology]

H. T. Finck

Salieri's advice to Schubert that he should "husband his resources of melody" was about as useful as a warning to an artesian well not to waste its water. [from his book Songs and Song writers]

John Fiske

...We must thus rank Schubert among the most consummate masters of expression the world has ever seen. His songs represent the high-water mark of human achievement in one direction, as Beethoven's symphonies represent it in another. [from his book Famous Composers and their works]

Sir George Grove

No memoir of Schubert can ever be satisfactory, because no relation can be established between his life and work, or rather, properly speaking, because there is no life to establish a relation with. [from Groves dictionary, 1st edition]

Had but a portion of the pains been spent on the musical education of Schubert that was lavished on that of Mozart or of Mendelssohn, we can hardly doubt that even his transcendent ability would have been enhanced by it, that he would have gained that control over the prodigious spontaneity of his genius which is his only want, and have risen to the very highest level in all departments of composition, as he did in songwriting. [My emphasis] [from Groves dictionary, 1st edition]

The reason why he wrote eight operas in one year was no doubt in great measure because he happened to meet with eight librettos; had it been four or twelve instead of eight the result would have been the same. [from Groves dictionary, 1st edition]

Think what the first appearance of these godlike pieces must have been! It was the rising of the Sun! He is now an everyday sight to us; but how was it the first time that he burst in all his brightness on the eyes of mortals? [from Groves dictionary, 1st edition]

Good God, it makes one's blood boil to think of so fine and rare a genius, one of the ten or twelve topmost men in the world, in want of even the common necessaries of life. Failure, disappointment, depreciation, and suchlike shocks and wounds of the heart and soul, these are the necessary accompaniments of a fine intellect and a sensitive heart; but to want the ordinary comforts and amenities of life, to want bread, it is too dreadful to think of. [from Groves' appendix to the English translation of Kreissle von Hellborn's biography]

Alas, I shall soon have to say good-bye to my beloved friend, Franz Schubert, and I do not know how to. We have been such inseperable companions for months and months, and close friends for years, and how lovable he is! I have got to know him so intimately - and yet - how dare I say so? In his great symphony in C he towers so high, so far above [all] but a very few of the "Chosen and Elect," that it is presumptuous in me to say I understand him. I can only gaze and worship him, and humbly thank God for having given us such a genius.[from a private letter, quoted by Schauffler in his biography].

Heinrich Kreissle von Hellborn

If ever there lived a 'naif' music-composer in the highest sense of the epithet, that man was Franz Schubert. [From his biography, the first on Schubert]

Franz Liszt

"...le musicien le plus poëte qui fut jamais." ("...the most poetic musician that ever lived"). [From a long postscript to a very long undated letter to M. Lambert Massart printed in Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, 5e Année No. 35, (2nd September 1838) quoted by Duncan, and others]

Such is the spell of your emotional world that it very nearly blinds us to the greatness of your craftsmanship. [quoted by Brendel in Musical thoughts and afterthoughts].

Our pianists scarcely realise what a glorious treasure they can find in Schubert's piano compositions ... As a bird lives in the air, so he lived in music, and in doing so sang melodies fit for angels. [Letter to Sigmund Lebert, 2 Dec 1868. Quoted by Clive]

Eusebius Mandyczewski

Schubert? Play his music, sing his songs, and you will know more about him than I can tell you! [recorded by Hans Gàl, quoted in Maurice Brown's Essays].

August Manns

I have reason to believe that my performance of the C-major Symphony in 1856 was the first in England, although I remember hearing one of the members of my then very small band speak of a rehearsal of it under the late Dr Wylde, when at the close of the first movement the principal horn called out to one of the first violins, "Tom, have you been able to discover a tune yet?" "I have not," was Tom's reply. [Musical Times February 1897, quoted in Duncan].

Musical World 1839, (French magazine, writer unknown)

A deep shade of suspicion, we regret to say, is beginning to be cast over the authenticity of posthumous compositions. The defunct popular composer not only becomes immortal in the poetical sense, but, by a curious felicity which publishers can best explain, actually goes on composing after he is dead. All Paris has been in a state of amazement at the posthumous diligence of the song-writer F. Schubert, who, while one would think his ashes repose in peace at Vienna, is still making eternal new songs, and putting drawing-rooms in commotion. [quoted by Duncan and many others]

Anton Rubinstein

Once more, and a thousand times more, Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert are the highest summits in music. [Quoted by Dvorák in his article Franz Schubert in the Century Magazine, July 1894, he quotes Die Musik und Ihre Meister as the source]

Robert Schumann

[On the C Major Symphony] And then the heavenly length of the symphony, like that of one of Jean Paul's romances in four thick volumes, never able to come to an end, for the very best reasons - in order to leave the reader able to go on romancing for himself.

Only the excellence of a work like Schubert's D minor quartet - and of many other things - can in any way console us for the early death of this eldest son of Beethoven; in a short time he accomplished and perfected more than anyone before him.

...he would have gradually set the whole German literature to music.

...Schubert, whose name, I thought, should only be whispered at night to the trees and stars.

Schubert will always remain the favourite of youth.

Time, though producing much that is beautiful, will not soon produce another Schubert.

Henry Heathcote Statham

But the admission of all that Sir G. Grove claims for Schubert as a composer would be tantamount to lowering very much the standards and requirements of instrumental music of the first class; and without grudging him his private pleasure and satisfaction in the contemplation of his Schubert, I must candidly aver, not only that I do not share this enthusiasm to anything like the same extent, but that I think it desirable, in the interests of a true musical criticism, that musical readers generally should not share it, or at least that they should be admonished to think twice before doing so ... Schubert's works ... are flabby, and therein reflect their author's whole life and character. Schubert's life and works, indeed, suggest a lesson almost as much moral as artistic - that the most strong and healthy form of art, as of character, is not ot be developed by giving one's self up to emotional impulses, however beautiful and attractive; that the strong artist, as well as the strong man, is he who is the master; not the servant, of his fancy and inspiration. [From an essay in the Edinburgh Review in 1883 on Schubert, Chopin, Lizst reprinted in his book My thought on Music and Musicians. (1892)]

Kenyon West

He sings as the bird sings, from an irresistable impulse. The bird never sings because it ought, but because it must. And when it has nothing to sing about, it is silent. [The Outlook, Vol 55, No. 6, February 6th 1897].