Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Strauss

Orchestras are petty ecosystems, and Strauss knew exactly where the egos graze. "Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them" lands like a backstage whisper that just happens to be true. On the surface it is a conductor's joke: a practical tip about eye contact and timing. Underneath, it's a miniature theory of attention as currency. A glance is not neutral; it is permission. It tells a section that their moment matters, that their sound should bloom, that they can take up more space. And with trombones, Strauss implies, that space expands fast.

The jab works because it punches up and down at once. The trombone section has long carried a cultural stereotype inside the orchestra: loud, brassy, occasionally smug, often tasked with the musical equivalent of kicking down a door. Strauss, a master of colossal orchestral architecture, wrote passages where trombones embody fate, apocalypse, or moral judgment. He also knew how quickly that grandeur turns into blare. The line is less anti-trombone than anti-excess: a warning that power, once acknowledged, tends to overperform.

Context matters: Strauss came of age in late-Romantic maximalism and helped push it toward modernity. He relied on enormous brass forces, then joked about not feeding them. That's the cynicism of a craftsman who understands both psychology and acoustics: if you want a controlled explosion, you don't applaud the dynamite.