Famous quotes by Composers

"Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the Middle Ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"The world has just got more dangerous because the things we use have got more dangerous"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization"

Pierre Schaeffer, Composer

"I don't think I'll ever be president of anything"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"I sometimes ponder on variation form, and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"This exploded in me: almost more music than I could consume"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"Ragtime was my lullaby"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule, take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial"

Hoagy Carmichael, Composer

"We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon"

Johannes Brahms, Composer

"Without any assistance whatever, I founded a school in Weimar in 10 years. Only I could perform certain works with the scanty means that I dared not ask anyone else to work with"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"The character of instrumental music... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"I foster a sorrowful conception of affection. Make no sacrifices"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"I am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever"

Arthur Sullivan, Composer

"We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"It is impossible to imagine a more complete fusion with nature than that of the Gypsy"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"In Hungary, all native music, in its origin, is divided naturally into melody destined for song or melody for the dance"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness"

Franz Liszt, Composer

"Brahms' Variations are better than mine, but mine were written before his"

Franz Liszt, Composer

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