19th-century Composer Quotes

Why should we not enter into our inheritance in the church as well as the concert hall?

Ralph Vaughan Williams

An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white- all over white- and somebody will say what exquisite taste. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all˘that is the want of taste˘that is mere evasion. English music is white and evades everything.

If you go down in the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down in the woods today
You'd better go in disguise
For every Bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because,
Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their Picnic.

John Walter Bratton

'T were vain to tell thee all I feel,
Or say for thee I'd die.
Ah, well-a-day, the sweetest melody
Could never, never say, one half my love for thee.

J. Augustine Wade

If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you're in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself. Every artist ought to pray that he may not be "a success". If he's a failure he stands a good chance of concentrating upon the best work of which he's capable.

Anything you can do, I can do better,
I can do anything better than you.

Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one's greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?

Richard Strauss

It is only that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is worth expressing in music.

Frederick Delius

Knowledge of instrumentation should be acquired through experience. Instrumental composition should be conceived instrumentally, imagining and hearing a particular orchestra for each particular and diverse musical condition of the mind.

Francesco Balilla Pratella

I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena. As a child, I was tremendously impressed by the qualities and character of the granite I found in Burgundy, where I often visited my grandfather... So I was always in touch with things of stone and with this kind of pure structural architecture — without frills or unnecessary decoration. All of this became an integral part of my thinking at a very early stage.

You request me to tell you… if it is true that the creed of all who profess to love high and serious art is: "There is no God but Bach, and Mendelssohn is his prophet"?

Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take.

From a tremendously vital white-hot fortissimo down to a trembling, limpid pianissimo so distant that it was difficult to sense whence the mysterious sound could be coming.

The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.

The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.

To Sibelius

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

Arnold Schoenberg

There are no compensations to weigh against advancing years – no, not one.

My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.

A man in the theatrical business is allowed more liberties than his business brothers. His business demands it.

After a lady nicknamed the Texas Patti published some of his love letters and sued him for breach of an alleged promise to make her an opera star

Oscar Hammerstein I

It is evidently known beyond contradiction that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

Jelly Roll Morton

I wish I could write to you as tenderly as I love you and tell you all the good things that I wish you. You are so infinitely dear to me, dearer than I can say... If things go on much longer as they are at present I shall have sometime to put you under glass or to have you set in gold. If only I could live in the same town with you and my parents... Do write me a nice letter soon. Your letters are like kisses.

Johannes Brahms

Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey, too.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond

When I am no more, you will hear said of my work: "After all, it is only so much..." You will detach yourself from it, perhaps... All that has no importance. I have done what I could... and so, judge, my God.