Do you have any favourite quotes by famous composers? Share them with us, so that we can discuss and learn what it means to really compose.


"One ought never to forget that by actually perfecting one piece one gains and learns more than by commencing or half finishing a dozen. Let it rest, let it rest and keep going back to it and working at it over and over again until it is completed as a finished work of art, until there is not a note too much or too little, not a bar you could improve upon. Whether it is beautiful also is an entirely different matter, but perfect it must be." - Brahms

"Dearest Papa,

I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange words and phrases artistically so as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so through sounds, for I am a composer."

-Mozart

Nobody's interested? =(



Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted by Bettina von Arnin, letter to Goethe, 1810



Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, quoted in Marion M Scott, Beethoven (1934)



Every real creation of art is independent, more powerful than the artist himself and returns to the Divine through its manifestation. It is one with man only in this, that it bears testimony to the mediation of the Divine in him.
- Beethoven, in a letter to Goethe

I don't have quotes from those dead old men, but from a composer at school (Who doesn't understand Swedish so well)

"I don't understand everything you say, but in music, we all speak the same language"

Here's (http://messiahcd.com/Information/about_Handel/about_handel.html) a bunch of quotes from and about Handel.


Originally posted by Mozart
Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

When asked why he borrowed material composed by Bononcini, Handel is said to have replied,

"It's much too good for him; he did not know what to do with it."

I like that one . . makes you wonder about plagirizing, eh?

Yeah, Handel was a real smart @$$. My favorite one is what he said to that violinist who had the unwieldy impromptu. I have felt like that on occaision.

K heres a good one

A grave keeper heard some music in the graveyard so he reported it to the police. The police came and found the music and started laughing, the grave robber asked.
"Why are you laughing?" they replied.
"It is just mozard decomposing!"

. . . =\ that was a joke, not a quote . . and it's spelled Mozart, not Mozard ;_; and finally, it was Beethoven's symphonies being played . .

I don't know a single quote from a composer, lol. I wonder, is this a sad thing that I don't know any, or is it the other way around? Only kidding, of course!

mozart* w/e typo. And I know it's not a quote, But i do think it's a bit funny

Anyhow, I believe it was Mozart who out smarted death. (though it may have been someone else) He noticed that alot of composers died after or writing their 9th symphony. So mozart, after his 8th skipped 9 and went to 10, 11, 12, 13. then he went back to write his 9th, He died writing it.

^ No. This is absolutely wrong.

Music, I feel must be emotional first and intellectual second- Ravel

I take this to mean that there is more to music than just a few dots and instructions on a piece of paper- it's more to do with the performer's ability to 'lift' the piece from the page and create their own personal interpretation.

In terms of composing- I think it means don't sacrifice the flow of the composition for all of these different rules.

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." -Mark Twain.

I love this quote. I have nothing against Wagner really, but Twain is the world's greatest smart-allek.

"Live in someone's shadow, outgrow that person and get a shadow of your own."

I thought of that when replying to Gnomish's thread, heh. I count as a composer, ne?

"If we cannot compose as beautifully as Mozart and Haydn, let us at least try to compose as purely."
- Johannes Brahms

I love the way Brahms thinks.