Fun And Interesting Classical Music Quotes

[rojo]

I`ll start off with a quote about Bach-

Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? -- Michael Torke

Feel free to -

- post quotes about classical music that you know and like.
- post comments about any of the quotes.

[rojo]

I find these two funny-

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
-- Gioacchino Rossini, 1867

I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain, Autobiography (1924)

[rojo]

This one is good-

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
Gustav Mahler

[Torsten Brandes]

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.

Giuseppe Verdi

[Torsten Brandes]

In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves.

The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect.

Luciano Berio

[Torsten Brandes]

The public doesn't want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.

Arthur Honegger

[Torsten Brandes]

By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique, but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.

For the works of the creative spirit last, they are essentially imperishable, while the world-stirring historical activities of even the most eminent men are circumscribed by time.

Music springs from and is replenished by a hidden source which lies outside the world or reality. Music ever spoke to me of a mysterious world beyond, which moved my heart deeply and eloquently intimated its transcendental nature.

Our inmost yearning, our deep desire for harmony in an extra-musical, transcendental sense feels affirmed, confirmed and calmed by music, and in this sense music seems to me a message a lofty ethical message that brings good tidings to the ethical part of our being from the mysteries of the world of sound.

Bruno Walter

[Torsten Brandes]

I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music.

Kurt Weill

[Torsten Brandes]

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.

Max Reger

[rojo]

Those are great, Torsten. I especially like that last one by Bruno Walter.

The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.
-- Arthur Schnabel

[rojo]

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.
Bela Bartok

[rojo]

Here`s an old chestnut-

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Thomas Beecham

For shame!

[giovannimusica]

Sir Thomas Beecham on Harpsichords:

The sound of a harpsichord is like two skeletons copulating on a hot tin roof.

[giovannimusica]

Hi RoJo,

Now I now why I have never been able to stand the music of Michael Torke - he thinks that listening to the B-minor Mass is like psychotherapy

[rojo]

Hi gio,

Well, maybe he just meant that it`s good for the mind? Not sure.

Some of Beecham`s quotes are pretty nasty, huh? He was quite the little