Arnold Schoenberg Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!

Arnold Schoenberg
Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

Arnold Schoenberg
If it is art, it is not for the masses. 'If it is for the masses it is not art' is a topic which is rather similar to a word of yourself.

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

Arnold Schoenberg
I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire. I want the Concerto to be difficult and I want the little finger to become longer. I can wait.
Of his Violin Concerto

Arnold Schoenberg
If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip... Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears…

Arnold Schoenberg
I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality.

Arnold Schoenberg
... if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

Arnold Schoenberg
There is a great Man living in this country — a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.

Arnold Schoenberg
Art is the desperate cry of those who experience in themselves the fate of humanity.

Arnold Schoenberg
Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" — whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.

Arnold Schoenberg
The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

Arnold Schoenberg
There is nothing I long for more intensely than to be taken for a better sort of Tchaikovsky—for heaven's sake: a bit better, but really that's all. Or if anything more, that people should know my tunes and whistle them.

Arnold Schoenberg
I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes.

Arnold Schoenberg
Hauer looks for laws. Good. But he looks for them where he will not find them.

Arnold Schoenberg
I find above all that the expression, "atonal music," is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying "the art of not falling," or swimming "the art of not drowning."

Arnold Schoenberg
My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.

Arnold Schoenberg
I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!

Arnold Schoenberg
An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker — the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.

Arnold Schoenberg
Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. … Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value — a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value.

Arnold Schoenberg
I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.

Arnold Schoenberg