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Music QuotesMUSICAL QUOTES

"Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!" Georges Bizet (1867) "The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for adults." Artur Schnabel "The people do not need music which they cannot understand." Andrei Zhdanov (1947) "The Opera is nothing but a public gathering place where we assemble on certain days without precisely knowing why." Voltaire (1732) "I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing." Bela Bartok "The best music always results from ecstasies of logic." Alban Berg "Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of the ear." Claude Debussy "Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music." Heinrich Heine (1837) "What is best in music is not to be found in the notes." Gustav Mahler "Tonality is a natural force, like gravity." Paul Hindemith It is not hard to compose, but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. Johannes Brahms Too many people today are trying to justify the precision with which organized musical sound is produced rather than the energy with which it is manipulated. David Diamond (1939) Beethoven and Liszt have contributed to the advent of long hair. Louis Moreau Gottschalk Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you. Gustav Holst (1921) Wagner, thank the fates, is no hypocrite. He says out what he means, and he usually means something nasty. James Huneker (1913) I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me. Gustav Mahler Is Wagner actually a man? Is he not rather a disease? Everything he touches falls ill; he has made music sick.

Friedrich Nietzsche Wagner is a composer who has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours. Gioacchino Rossini M. Ravel refuses the Legion of Honor, but all his music accepts it. Erik Satie A creative artist works on his next composition because he is not satisfied with his previous one. Dmitri Shostakovich (1959) A good composer does not imitate; he steals. Igor Stravinsky A composer knows as little as anyone else where the substance of his music comes from. Edgard Varese (1959) The current state of music presents a variety of solutions in search of a problem, the problem being to find somebody left to listen. Ned Rorem (1967) Musicians take all the liberties they can. Ludwig van Beethoven When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer. Leonard Bernstein (1963) You must have the score in your head, not your head in the score. Hans von Bulow The conductor has the advantage of not seeing the audience. Andre Kostelanetz Show me an orchestra that likes its conductor and I'll show you a lousy orchestra. Goddard Lieberson There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure. Andre Previn (1972) The hardest thing in the world is to start an orchestra, and the next hardest, to stop it. Hans Richter When a new man faces the orchestra--from the way he walks up the steps to the podium and opens his score--before he even picks up his baton--we know whether he is the master or we. Franz Strauss I love music more than my own convenience. Actually, I love it more than myself--but it is vastly more loveable than I. George Szell (1963) In Europe, when a rich woman has an affair with a conductor, they have a baby.

In America, she endows an orchestra for him. Edgard Varese By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision. Bruno Walter Don't play it too fast, and not too slow--just half-fast. Louis Armstrong There are today so many good musicians that it is becoming increasingly hard to find a great artist. Ernst Bacon (1963) The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen. Claude Debussy You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy. Franz Liszt The task for the performer consists in establishing an equilibrium between the composition and his own conscience. Yehudi Menuhin (1956) Don't be ashamed if you can't play the piano. Be proud of it. E.W. Howe (1911) Many people still wear vests, read books, write their own Christmas greetings, go to the theater, shave with straight razors, and play the piano. Arthur Loesser (1954) God hath given to some men wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing the fiddle. Robert Southey (1812) Festivals are for the purpose of attracting trade to the town. What that has to do with music I don't know. Sir Thomas Beecham (1956) A concert is like a bullfight--the moment of truth. Artur Rubinstein (1974) Composers and musicians have always starved and, as this is a sentimental country, we think the tradition should be continued. Sir Thomas Beecham The contemporary composer is a gate-crasher trying to push his way into a company to which he has not been invited. Arthur Honegger (1951) Every great composer, without exception, has been appreciated, admired, applauded, and loved in his own time. Even those who died miserably, died famous. Henry Pleasants (1955) Every composer's music reflects in its subject matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing it. Virgil Thomson (1939)

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste. Whitney Balliett (1962) You cannot have critics with standards, you can only have music with standards which critics may observe. Alan Walker (1968) Criticism is the rationalization of intuitive musical experience. Alan Walker (1968) The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee. Jean Cocteau I hate music--especially when it's played. Jimmy Durante Song [is] the licensed medium for bawling in public things too silly or sacred to be uttered in ordinary speech. Oliver Herford Classic music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. Kin Hubbard There are only two kinds of music: German music and bad music. H.L. Mencken The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and (up to the present, at all events) the least musical race on Earth. Stendhal (1824) If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation. Oscar Wilde (1891) Having verse set to music is like looking at a painting through a stained-glass window. Paul Valery Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet. Ned Rorem (1972) When in doubt, sing loud. Robert Merrill (1957) I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand. Sir Edward Appleton (1955) One goes to see a tragedy to be moved, to the opera one goes either for want of any other interest or to facilitate digestion. Voltaire The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings. Paul Hindemith (1952) Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second. Maurice Ravel

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music. Stendhal (1824) The artist must be as much above the political controversies of the day as the art which he serves. Wilhelm Furtwangler (1937) Of all the forms of the uplift, perhaps the most futile is that which addresses itself to educating the proletariat in music. H.L. Mencken (1919) Enviable Nero, who had the strength to destroy a loathsome people to the sound of music and song. Franz Schubert (1824) I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault. Dmitri Shostakovich It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why anyone should have a knowledge of it. Aristotle A musicologist is a person who can read music but can't hear it. Sir Thomas Beecham The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead. Igor Stravinsky (1964) The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes. Sir Thomas Beecham The Italians exalt music; the French enliven it; the Germans strive after it; and the English pay for it well. Johann Mattheson (1713) Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and violinist. G.K. Chesterton Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know. John Keats (1819) Suitable music played to any scene, action, event or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary on it. Arthur Schopenhauer (1818) I play a musical instrument some, but only for my own amazement. Fred Allen (1936) Loud is good. Frank Loesser

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