19th-century Composer Quotes

We who stand on the threshold of a new century can look back on an era of unparalleled progress. Looking into the future an equally bright prospect greets our eyes; on all sides fruitful fields of research invite our labor and promise easy and rich returns. Surely this is the golden age of mathematics!

James Lord Pierpont

When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea, Thou who rulest wind and water, stand by me.

Charles Albert Tindley

What good it does one to have a hearty, uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Charlotte Alington Barnard

Oh! we don't want to lose you but we think you ought to go
For your King and your Country both need you so.

Paul Rubens (composer)

They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him?

There's an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean,
Where we used to sit and dream, Nellie Dean.
And the waters as they flow
Seem to murmur sweet and low,
'You're my heart's desire; I love you, Nellie Dean.'

Harry Armstrong

D' ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?
D' ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
D' ye ken John Peel when he's far far away With his hounds and his horn in the morning?
'Twas the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,
And the cry of his hounds, has me ofttimes led;
For Peel's view-hollo would waken the dead,
Or the fox from his lair in the morning.

John Woodcock Graves

Music is a pastime, a relaxation from more serious occupations.

Alexander Borodin

You conductors who are so proud of your power! When a new man faces the orchestra–from the way he walks up the steps to the podium and opens his score–before he even picks up his baton–we know whether he is the master or we.

Come back, Paddy Reilly, to Ballyjamesduff;
Come home, Paddy Reilly, to me.

The best music always results from ecstasies of logic.

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known!

Has anybody here seen Kelly?
Kelly from the Isle of Man?

I'm told that Saint-Saëns has informed a delighted public that since the war began he has composed music for the stage, melodies, an elegy and a piece for the trombone. If he'd been making shell-cases instead it might have been all the better for music.

If of these United States I was the President,
No man that owed another should ever pay a cent;
And he who dunn'd another should be banished far away,
And attention to the pretty girls is all a man should pay.

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.

I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful.

Artists live with God – but give their little finger to Satan. I sleep with the angels and dream of the devil.

Heitor Villa-Lobos

I sometimes lack confidence in public, although I am proud enough inwardly.

Robert Schumann

For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art.

Ravel [...] occupies a considerable place in modern music. I knew him as a child and have always taken an interest in his work. I confess to my shame—that I didn't think him capable of publicly acknowledging that he owes me a lot. I was very moved by it.

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.

He died alone and forgotten and only in modern times has he come up as a genius composer and a brilliant visionary.