Quotes from Charles Rosen

The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition.

When recordings replaced concerts as the dominant mode of hearing music, our conception of the nature of performance and of music itself was altered.

Stage fright, like epilepsy, is a divine ailment, a sacred madness... It is a grace that is sufficient in the old Jesuit sense - that is, insufficient by itself but a necessary condition for success.

A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed; it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art.

A cough is the basic sign of inattention. Musicians never, in my experience, cough when playing in public.

To appreciate a new and difficult style, as I have said, takes an act of will, a decision to experience it again.

expression is always concentrated in the dissonance.