Quotes About Music

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

The purity of unison singing, unaffected by alien motives of musical techniques, the clarity, unspoiled by the attempt to give musical art an autonomy of its own apart from the words, the simplicity and frugality, the humaneness and warmth of this way of singing is the essence of all congregational singing. This

In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.

When I tried to play something and screwed up, I'd hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it.

The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood.

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

So many people equate money and success with happiness, especially in the music industry.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn't have.

Why is it that whenever I hear music I think I'm a bride?

But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations.

I can think of nothing more horrible than an orchestra that has gone out of control at rehearsal. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy.

Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh.

The majority of my symphonies are tombstones

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.

on Prokofiev] And, by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly.

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off.

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general.

I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. (...) But how could I do it? I was constantly under suspicion then, and critics counted what percentage of my symphonies was in a major key and what percentage in a minor key. That oppressed me, it deprived me of the will to compose.

The Seventh Symphony had been planned before the war and consequently, it simply cannot be seen as a reaction to Hitler's attack. The 'invasion theme' has nothing to do with the attack. I was thinking of other enemies of humanity when I composed the team.

Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. (...) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well.

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music.

Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one.

Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth [Symphony] was about.

Studying Mahler changed many things in my tastes as a composer. Mahler & Berg are my favourite composers even today, as opposed to Hindemith, say, a Krenek and Milhaud whom I liked when I was young but cooled towards rapidly.