# Quotes



## Ciel_Rouge (May 16, 2008)

I suppose there are many interesting quotes about the classical but they are usually scattered . Perhaps we could start collecting and commenting them in one place. So here it goes:

"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law." - Claude Debussy

"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." - Ludwig van Beethoven

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." - Victor Hugo


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## marval (Oct 29, 2007)

Here are a few more.


"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music"
Sergei Rachmaninoff

"In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages."
Sir Thomas Beecham on Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

"Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside." 
Ludwig van Beethoven


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## Mendelssohn (Nov 24, 2007)

What about these:

"Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music"
Rossini

"Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour"
Rossini

"Keep an eye on him;one day he will make the world talk of him"
Mozart,on hearing the 17-yo Beethoven

"We cannot despair about mankind knowing that Mozart was a man"
Albert Einstein

"Liszt has many fingers but few brains"
Mendelssohn

"Without craftsmanship,inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind"
Brahms


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

"There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require."
Elgar

"This is what I hear all day - the trees are singing my music - or have I sung theirs?"
Elgar


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it."
(Thomas Beecham)

Question: "Have you heard any Stockhausen?"
Thomas Beecham: "No, but I believe I have stepped in some."

"My music is best understood by children and animals."
(Igor Stravinsky)

"I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland"
(Woody Allen)

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
(Groucho Marx)

"Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings."
(Ed Gardner)

"It's easy to play a musical instrument: All you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
(JS Bach)

"One can't judge Wagner's "Lohengrin" after just one hearing and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time."
(Rossini)

"I'd rather be dead than singing "Satisfaction" when I'm forty-five."
(Mick Jagger)

"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
(Frank Zappa)


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## BuddhaBandit (Dec 31, 2007)

jhar26 said:


> "I'd rather be dead than singing "Satisfaction" when I'm forty-five."
> (Mick Jagger)


Then it's too bad he's still singing it at 65...

How about:

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung" -Voltaire

"One can't judge Wagner's opera 'Lohengrin' after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time." -Rossini


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## marval (Oct 29, 2007)

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.
Simon Rattle

"He has an enormously wide repertory. He can conduct anything, provided it's by Beethoven, Brahms or Wagner. He tried Debussy's La Mer once. It came out as Das Merde."
Anonymous Orchestra Member on George Szell 

I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play.
Artur Schnabel Australian pianist when asked the secret of piano playing.

"Never look at the trombones it only encourages them."
Richard Strauss

"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul."
J.S Bach


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

"In art, everything is possible, but everything what is made is not necessary." -Arvo Pärt

“The most important things that happen between people who are very close to each other are not stated, are not even possible to express. One doesn’t need to and shouldn’t say anything.” -Arvo Pärt, relating to his style of composing.


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## YsayeOp.27#6 (Dec 7, 2007)

"Oh, how difficult it is to make anyone see and feel in music what we see and feel ourselves.... [Music] It alone clarifies, reconciles, and consoles. But it is not a straw just barely clutched at. It is a faithful friend, protector, and comforter, and for its sake alone, life in this world is worth living."

Tchaikovsky


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## marval (Oct 29, 2007)

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
John Cage

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away. 
Sir Thomas Beecham

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Ludwig van Beethoven

You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. 
Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket

Music is an outburst of the soul.
Frederick Delius


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

Charles Darwin


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## MoonlightSonata (Mar 29, 2014)

"I wallowed in rapture."
I can't remember who this was, but I believe they were talking about Donizetti.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

After hearing Sibelius' 7th Symphony Vaughan Williams wrote to him:

"You have lit a candle in the world of music that will never go out”


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

“You play Bach your way and I’ll play him his way.”

- Wanda Landowska to Pablo Casals in response to his criticism of her revival of the harpsichord for performance of Bach’s keyboard works


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Leonard Bernstein

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

"Joking apart, Prince Albert asked me to go to him on Saturday at two o'clock so that I may try his organ"

Mendelssohn (quoted in Ferrucio Bonavia, 'Musicians on Music' - 1956).

"Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer."

John Ruskin (1881).

"I don't like composers who think, it gets in the way of their plagiarism."

Librettist Howard Dietz.

" A good composer does not initiate, he steals."

Stravinsky.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Giuseppe Verdi : Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Simplicissimus said:


> "You play Bach your way and I'll play him his way."
> 
> - Wanda Landowska to Pablo Casals in response to his criticism of her revival of the harpsichord for performance of Bach's keyboard works


Not exactly. Denise Restout, who was Landowska's amanuensis, friend, and confidante, was present when the exchange took place and remembered it vividly.

In 1941 Casals and some friends paid a visit to Landowska who was living in Banyuls-sur-Mer, a few miles from Casals' own residence. Landowska had received, thanks to a generous loan of money from a student, a Pleyel harpsichord. It was housed in a small ground floor room, not far from the apartment where she and Denise Restout were living.

According to Denise Restout, "Wanda played for them, and she and Casals began to discuss some aspects of Bach's interpretation, especially the question of ornamentation. Casals asked Wanda why she played the trills starting with the upper note, admitting that he was not certain that it was always the case. Wanda explained to him her reasons, and -- for further evidence --she asked me to go to the apartment to fetch the original edition of Leopold Mozart's _Violinschule_, one of the very few precious books we had saved from St-Leu. It contains a clear description of the way trills should be realized. Casals listened, looked at the book, but still was not convinced. So, with a smile, Wanda said to him: 'Mon cher Pau (as she called him) ne discutons pas davantage. Continuez a jouer Bach a votre facon et moi, a sa facon.' ('Let us not fight anymore. Continue to play Bach your way and I, his way'). They both laughed and went on to other subjects. A great and long friendship existed between them as well as a very sincere mutual admiration. Wanda's 'boutade' was taken exactly for what it was: a jestful pun."


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> If I weren't reasonably placid, I don't think I could cope with this sort of life. To be a diva, you've got to be absolutely like a horse.


Joan Sutherland :angel:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Triplets said:


> Mozart and Bach were raised in such musical families that when they burped after being with with their wet nurse they did it in fugues with 3 voices. It is a lot easier for a genius to be very productive when making music is as natural as speaking


FROM: https://www.talkclassical.com/65841-mussorgsky-worst-famous-composers-3.html#post1826777


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

"All of Italian opera can be heard in [Bellini's La Sonnambula] "Ah! non creda [mirarti]."
--Renata Scotto in "Scotto, More Than a DIva."


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

"He who makes songs without feeling spoils both his words and his music." ~ Guillaume de Machaut

(Qui de sentement ne fait, Son dit et son chant contrefait.) _Remede de Fortune_, line 407


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Rogerx said:


> > Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
> 
> 
> Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


This quote is now attributed to Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin:
"True genius without heart is a thing of nought - for not great understanding alone, not intelligence alone, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius." - Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, entry in Mozart's souvenir album (1787-04-11) from Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon [Harper-Collins, 1966, ISBN 0-060-92692-9], p. 312.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Giacchino Rossini: “Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.”


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.


Sir Georg Solti


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

_If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
_
Jascha Heifetz


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

"The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle."
Leonard Bernstein


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

“Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.”
~ Frédéric Chopin

“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”
~ Douglas Adams


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

George Bizet: “As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.”


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> "Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man."
> ~ Frédéric Chopin


This is from the "Delfina Potocka letters", which were proven to be a fraud. I haven't found published, peer-reviewed books or articles that regard the quote as reliable. The letters also contain writing such as this:

"Inspiration and ideas only come to me when I have not had a woman for a long time. When I have emptied my fluid into a woman so much I am pumped dry, inspiration deserts me and no new musical ideas come into my head. Think how strange and beautiful it is, that the force used to fertilise a woman, creating new life in her, is the same force that creates a work of art. It is the same life-giving fluid, yet man wastes it on one single moment of pleasure. The same is true of science. Those who make great discoveries must stay away from women. The formula is simple enough: A man must renounce women, then the energy accumulating in his system will go - not from his cock and balls into a woman - but into his brain in the form of inspiration where it might give birth to a work of art. Think of it, the sexual desire that drives men into women's arms can be transformed into inspiration. But only for those who have talent. A fool who lives without women will go mad with frustration. For the genius, unrequited love and unfulfilled passion, sharpened by the unattainable image of their beloved, is an endless source of inspiration".

"Oh my sweetest Phindela, think of how much of that precious fluid I have wasted on you ramming away at you to no good purpose. I have not given you a baby and think how many musical ideas have been squandered inside you. Ballads, Polonaises, perhaps even an entire concerto have been lost forever up your D flat major, I cannot tell you how many. I have been so deeply immersed in my love for you I have hardly created anything, everything creative went straight from my cock into your "des durka". Works that could have seen the light of day are forever drowned in your D flat major. You are now carrying so much of my music in your womb that you are pregnant with my compositions. The saints were right when they said that women were the gates of hell. No, no, I take that back. You are the gates of heaven. For you I will give up fame, work, everything.

[he then writes her a little poem]

*** you is my favourite occupation
Bed beats inspiration
I long for your lovely ****
So says your faithful Fritz

[it probably reads better in French]
[…] Oh Phindela, my own little Phindela, how I long to be with you. I am trembling and shivering as if ants were crawling all over me from my brain down to my cock. When the coach will at long last bring you back I'll cling so hard that for a whole week you won't be able to get me out of your des durka. Bother all inspiration, ideas and works of art. Let my works vanish up that black hole forever.[…] I kiss you all over your dear little body and inside.
Your faithful Frycek, your most talented pupil who has mastered the art of love ."


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Rogerx said:


> George Bizet: "As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."


Definitely the case for opera, with the exception of L'amico Fritz!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> In a sense, I revolutionized the operatic scene because I proved you can make a great international career without the Metropolitan. I'm the only singer who's done that, and I'm proud of that, so it's all worked out for the best.


Beverly Sills.............................


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Franz Liszt: "Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."

Gustav Mahler: "I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way."


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## Alinde (Feb 8, 2020)

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Bil Nye (1850 - 1896)


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Alinde said:


> "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Bil Nye (1850 - 1896)


Wow, that sounds like it could have come from Yogi Berra.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> Wow, that sounds like it could have come from Yogi Berra.


It's often attributed to Mark Twain, but Twain only cited it. Twain enjoyed Wagner, attended performances at the Bayreuth festival in 1891, and wrote amusingly of his experience.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> It's often attributed to Mark Twain, but Twain only cited it. Twain enjoyed Wagner, attended performances at the Bayreuth festival in 1891, and wrote amusingly of his experience.


Makes me recall Wilde's fondness of Wagner as well, now that you mentioned Twain. Wilde had seen Wagner himself conduct _Holländer_ during one of Wagner's British tours some time in the 1870s and the collection of Wagner's letters to Roeckel were on a book list Wilde requested from jail during his imprisonment.

He also made multiple amusing remarks about Wagner: "It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage."

This is even better. After his second son was born he wrote in a letter that the baby "also has a superb voice, which it freely exercises: its style is essentially Wagnerian".


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Well Wagner's music makes aliens want to go back in time using a time machine and invade Germany


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Back on topic:



> Technique is the basis of every pursuit. If you're a sportsman or you're a singer or a swimmer, well that comes under sport but you have to develop a basic technique to know what you're doing at any given time.


Dame Joan Sutherland


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Robert Schumann:


> "In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of."


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> In our profession someone can be very brilliant and acquire total technical mastery. Yet in the last resort, the only thing that really counts is his quality as a human being. For music is created by Man for Man. And if someone sees nothing more than notes in it, this can perhaps be very interesting, but it cannot enrich him. And music should exist for one purpose only; to enrich Man and give him something he has lost in most respects.


Herbert von Karajan


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

“I always felt that my first obligation was to confront audiences with the music of Schoenberg. This music is absolutely central for the understanding of what is going on in our century and has been the source of so many developments... But the problems which his music reflects—the great tension, the inner tension of his music—is something that not many people want to live with.”

Michael Gielen, 1996


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## Ich muss Caligari werden (Jul 15, 2020)

"My music is strange: where it rings out, it seizes upon the deepest; but it is rarely given the opportunity again." ("Meiner Musik geht es merkwürdig: wo sie erklingt, ergreift sie aufs tiefste; aber es wird ihr selten Gelegenheit dazu gegeben," *Richard Wetz*, 1932.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> "Leave off driving your composers. It might prove to be as dangerous as it is generally unnecessary. After all, composing cannot be turned out like spinning or sewing. Some respected colleagues (Bach, Mozart, Schubert) have spoilt the world terribly. But if we can't imitate them in the beauty of their writing, we should certainly beware of seeking to match the speed of their writing. It would also be unjust to put all the blame on idleness alone. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me. If, incidentally, they would use us poets for some other purpose, they would see that we are thoroughly and naturally industrious dispositions . . . . I have no time: otherwise I should love to chat on the difficulty of composing and how irresponsible publishers are."


 Johannes Brahms, composer


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## Wilhelm Theophilus (Aug 8, 2020)

KenOC said:


> "As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed."
> 
> Charles Darwin


Basically the Darwinist cannot account for the existence music. It doesn't fit into the Darwinian worldview.


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## Ich muss Caligari werden (Jul 15, 2020)

From David Dubal's _Essential Canon of Classical Music_ "In music as in the other arts, we have been badly conditioned to 'the masterpiece syndrome,' or what the American composer Aaron Copland condemned as 'a special stupidity of our own musical time; the notion that only the best, the highest, the greatest among musical masterworks is worthy of our attention.' He had 'little patience with those who cannot see the vitality of an original mind at work, even when the work contains serious blemishes.'"


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

Wilhem Theophilus said:


> Basically the Darwinist cannot account for the existence music. It doesn't fit into the Darwinian worldview.


Darwin moved in mysterious ways.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Anecdotes:

After a concert a woman rushed up to violinist Fritz Kreisler and gushed, "I'd give my whole life to play the violin like you." To which he replied, "I did."

After a performance someone once said to Vladimir Horowitz, "It seems you have 20 shades between _piano_ and _pianissimo_." Horowitz smiled and said, "Thank you for noticing."

V


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## accmacmusic (May 9, 2020)

> If we let fashion, love of innovation, and an alleged scientific spirit tempt us to surrender the native quality of our own art, the free natural certainty of our work and perception, our bright golden light, then we are simply being stupid and senseless.


-Giuseppe Verdi


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

"Without craftsmanship,inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind"
..Brahms


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## Sequentia (Nov 23, 2011)

Rogerx said:


> "Leave off driving your composers. It might prove to be as dangerous as it is generally unnecessary. After all, composing cannot be turned out like spinning or sewing. Some respected colleagues (Bach, Mozart, Schubert) have spoilt the world terribly. But if we can't imitate them in the beauty of their writing, we should certainly beware of seeking to match the speed of their writing. It would also be unjust to put all the blame on idleness alone. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me. If, incidentally, they would use us poets for some other purpose, they would see that we are thoroughly and naturally industrious dispositions . . . . I have no time: otherwise I should love to chat on the difficulty of composing and how irresponsible publishers are."
> 
> Johannes Brahms, composer


I've seen a different version of this quote by Brahms (or perhaps another quote expressing a similar sentiment):

"If we cannot compose with the beauty of Mozart and Haydn, let us at least try to compose with their purity."


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

When Henry Cowell visited Carl Ruggles at his studio, he found Ruggles at his piano playing the same chordal agglomerate over and over again. Eventually Cowell shouted, “What on earth are you doing to that chord? You’ve been playing it for at least an hour.” Ruggles shouted back, “I’m giving it the test of time.”


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven. _R Wagner_

Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair. _C Gounod_

Mozart is the most inaccessible of the great masters. _ A Schnabel_

Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled. _R Wagner_

I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers _John Edensor Littlewood_


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

More...................

Mozart, Beethoven - how can you not want to share them with everyone and anyone? This stuff is of as great importance as the food we eat and the air we breathe. _Charles Hazelwood_

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together. _ Lukas Foss_

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about? _Douglas Adams_

One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends. _Stephen Spender_


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Sequentia said:


> I've seen a different version of this quote by Brahms (or perhaps another quote expressing a similar sentiment):
> "If we cannot compose with the beauty of Mozart and Haydn, let us at least try to compose with their purity."


I'm pretty sure Brahms said this only about Mozart.
See:
The Music Journal, Volume 39, Issues 1-4
Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, Volumes 8-10
Mozart in Retrospect: Studies in Criticism and Bibliography


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Maurice Ravel: "The only love affair I have ever had was with music."


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

"


> Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone"


― George Bernard Shaw


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Wilhem Theophilus said:


> Basically the Darwinist cannot account for the existence music. It doesn't fit into the Darwinian worldview.


I don't think the existence of music is a particular challenge for evolutionary biologists - our species (and a couple of earlier humanoid species) evolved with a tendency towards the artistic and the religious (the potential for these having been greatly enhanced by our bigger brains and consciousness) ... and this was part of how they maintained social and community order. There are also obvious evolutionary advantages in having different emotional reactions to different sounds. The rest is sociology and evolutionary biologists have nothing to say about that. So called "social Darwinism" is a dodgy area but "Darwinists" are not to blame for it.

I am not sure what you mean by "Darwinian worldview". Darwin discovered and developed a theory that is probably the most secure theory (i.e. in describing what happens) in all science. I'm not sure that is a "worldview" so much as one of our "intellectual crown jewels".


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Enthusiast said:


> I don't think the existence of music is a particular challenge for evolutionary biologists - our species (and a couple of earlier humanoid species) evolved with a tendency towards the artistic and the religious (the potential for these having been greatly enhanced by our bigger brains and consciousness) ... and this was part of how they maintained social and community order. There are also obvious evolutionary advantages in having different emotional reactions to different sounds. The rest is sociology and evolutionary biologists have nothing to say about that. So called "social Darwinism" is a dodgy area but "Darwinists" are not to blame for it.
> 
> I am not sure what you mean by "Darwinian worldview". Darwin discovered and developed a theory that is probably the most secure theory (i.e. in describing what happens) in all science. I'm not sure that is a "worldview" so much as one of our "intellectual crown jewels".


This is how threads go into religion. Darwinism is a belief system, not fact.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ I'm not sure if you are joking but what you say is 100% untrue. What would be the point of a belief system that amounted to an understanding of evolution? Nor do I intend to debate the evident truth of the theory in this thread. I know it makes some people uncomfortable but fear that is a lack of imagination on their part (as well as a failure to use logic).


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ I'm not sure if you are joking but what you say is 100% untrue. What would be the point of a belief system that amounted to an understanding of evolution? Nor do I intend to debate the evident truth of the theory in this thread. I know it makes some people uncomfortable but fear that is a lack of imagination on their part (as well as a failure to use logic).


I am not uncomfortable with the so-called theory of evolution. It does not threaten my beliefs.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ No, why should it. I am not religious but believe that it should be possible to accept scientific evidence as well as to have faith in things that are not open to scientific investigation. But, when educated people reject evidence in favour of faith or guesses or fantasies or dogma, I fear we are on a downward slope to some form of hell.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ No, why should it. I am not religious but believe that it should be possible to accept scientific evidence as well as to have faith in things that are not open to scientific investigation. But, when educated people reject evidence in favour of faith or guesses or fantasies or dogma, I fear we are on a downward slope to some form of hell.


I would not reject evidence (raw data), but someone's interpretation of that evidence is a different matter.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Opera is like an oyster; it must be swallowed whole or not at all.

SPIKE HUGHES, Nights at the Opera


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

SixFootScowl said:


> I would not reject evidence (raw data), but someone's interpretation of that evidence is a different matter.


That sounds fair enough ... providing you have the knowledge and skill to do so. Perhaps I read you wrong as you seemed to be saying that something that is beyond doubt was just a point of view. My apologies.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

"Something new has the chance to speak to someone immediately. There isn't this expectation of what they're about to hear, so people can be really captivated, really quickly." 
Hilary Hahn said so according to brainy quote.com


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

When government questions its citizens for suspicions of a crime, it's called an investigation. When the citizens question their government, it's called a conspiracy theory. We've been conditioned not to question the government story.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

So we go on topic:



> Lots of young singers come to me and ask, 'May I sing to you?' I say, 'Yes, you can sing to me as long as you don't mind what I tell you, because I'm not going to flatter you. I'm going to tell you what I think.' Oh, yes, they're quite happy about that, until they hear it.


 Richard Bonynge


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## Ich muss Caligari werden (Jul 15, 2020)

"It requires no long residence here to adopt the frequently expressed opinion that the French are not a musical nation." Louis Spohr, _Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung_, circa 1820. (Spohr was unhappy with the reception of his work there).


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Mendelssohn said:


> "Keep an eye on him;one day he will make the world talk of him"
> Mozart,on hearing the 17-yo Beethoven


Wao. Didn't know that. Nice one Amadeus!


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