Schubert. L’ami Franz. André Tubeuf

10 × 19 cm 180 pages softback november 2021 estimated retail price: 19 €

André Tubeuf has taught philosophy, advised the Ministry of Culture on music matters, and regularly written for the press (Opéra international, L’Avant-Scène Opéra, Harmonie, Classica, Le Point). He is the author of many works on music as well as novels, including La Quatorzième Valse (Actes Sud, 2008). In 2018, he was awarded the Académie française’s criticism prize for his entire body of work.

L’ami Franz SCHUBERT

My friend Franz

André Tubeuf

“For several decades Schubert remained like a rumour – beyond a name, the public was familiar with just two or three of his works that conveyed his voice, his appeal and perhaps even a confused glimpse of his mind, and drew us in not through eloquence or rhetoric but in a subtle way that was uniquely his. A certain approach, a sense of intimacy. For me, it was not so much a message as a word whispered in my ear, and my ear alone. There was a sense of connivance which few in the world of music have been able to create but which he, despite (or more likely because of) his inexperience, poverty and obscurity, had an immediate intuition for. Neither Mozart nor Beethoven take us into their bedroom through their music, but Schubert does, even though he had no bed to call his own.”

André Tubeuf

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) : André Tubeuf, the author of so many authoritative books on the great composers, not least Mozart and Beethoven, had never written about him before. But in this deeply insightful essay, he evokes his friend Franz, a figure simultaneously familiar, foreign and fraternal. Analysing his sonatas for piano, his chamber music and his Lieder, André Tubeuf highlights the composer’s endless capacity to console, his tender melancholy, his tears and the unique way he reaches out to listeners, welcoming us in rather than dictating to us – for ultimately this visionary musician is our friend. It is up to us to deserve the friendship that he so generously offers us and to join him on a journey that will continue forever…