a compilation of some of my favourite composer quotes:

doing-it-for-debussy:

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”  – Igor Stravinsky

“I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.” – Edvard Grieg 

“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.” – Richard Strauss

“He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” – Richard Strauss on Schoenberg

“I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.” – Ludvig van Beethoven

“I have written a chorale both sober and suitable. In it I have put everything I know about boredom. I dedicate this to those who do not like me.” – Erik Satie

Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.” – Gioacchino Rossini

“What a good thing this isn’t music.” – Gioacchino Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique 

“Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!” – Gioacchino Rossini

“In opera there is always too much singing.” – Claude Debussy

“Bring me coffee before I turn into a goat!” – Johann Sebastian Bach

“Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” – Aaron Copland 

“The audience expected something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” – Louis Schnieder on Debussy’s La Mer

“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” – Clara Schumann on Liszt 

“What a giftless bastard!” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Brahms

“Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Bach on the wrong notes” – 

Sergei Prokofiev on Stravinsky 

And, saving the best for last…

“Lick my ass up and down” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Feel free to add more! (Also please don’t think that I agree with all of these, I am a huge fan of Symphonie Fantastique and La Mer!!)

studysection:

Hey guys! Haven’t made a quotes masterpost in a while, so I created one for the composes! And I know it’s a different header format, but I wanted to try it out! As always, I hope you enjoy these quotes and find them inspirational, like I have.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • “I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”

Johannes Brahms

  • “Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.”

Virgil Thomson

  • “Let your mind alone, and see what happens.”
  • “I don’t go around regretting things that don’t happen.”
  • “Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”

Franz Schubert

  • “Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy.”
  • “The moment is supreme.”
  • “The world resembles a stage on which every man is playing a part.”
  • “You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.”

Gustav Mahler

  • “It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.”
  • “Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.”
  • “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
  • “It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.”
  • “Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one’s way.”
  • “The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star but to go one’s way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.”
  • “I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas – I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.”

Claude Debussy

  • “A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.”
  • “Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.”

John Cage

  • “We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.”
  • “We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.”
  • “The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”
  • “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
  • “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”
  • “We need not destroy the past. It is gone.”
  • “When we separate music from life we get art.”

Leonard Bernstein

  • “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”

Franz Liszt

  • “Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day.”
  • “Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.”

George Gershwin

  • “Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.”
  • “True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.”
  • “I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.”
  • “It is always possible to create something original.”

Ludwig van Beethoven

  • “I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.”
  • “What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”
  • “This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.”
  • “Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the divine.”