Few composers have undergone such extensive re-evaluation in the past few decades as Schubert. Indeed, as Brian Newbould points out at the start of the introduction to his own recent study of the composer, ‘it may not be entirely coincidental that the unprecedented growth in Schubert research witnessed in the last quarter of the twentieth century came in a period framed by two anniversaries’, the 150th of his death, in 1978, and the 200th of his birth, in 1997. Topics have ranged widely, from paper studies to the composer's sexuality, and indeed there has been much work to be done, for the image of Schubert has traditionally been coloured with more than its fair share of myths. One of the most pervasive and resilient ones to have come into question, however, concerns that of a composer who was simply ‘a vessel through which his music passed’ (to parody Stravinsky's famous self-appraisal with regard to The Rite of Spring).

The origins of this idea go back a long way, to the chief proponent of Schubert's songs during his lifetime, Johann Michael Vogl. According to later testimony by his widow, Vogl ‘was always of the opinion that Schubert was in a kind of trance-like state whenever he composed’. As evidence for what she herself terms a ‘state of clairvoyance’, Kunigunde Vogl then recounts an instance where Schubert supposedly did not recognize a song that he had written previously. Even in more recent times, Schubert has been described as composing like a ‘sleepwalker’ and as ‘the least self-critical of composers’.