Composer Quotes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig van Beethoven

Johann Sebastian Bach

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Frédéric Chopin

George Frideric Handel

Giuseppe Verdi

I have departed from this planet and I have left behind my poor earthly ones with their occupations which are as many as they are useless; at last I am living in the scintillating splendor of the stars, each of which used to seem to me as large as millions of suns.

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

I never compose in the abstract; that is to say, the musical thought never appears otherwise than in a suitable external form. In this way I invent the musical idea and the instrumentation simultaneously.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The silver swan, who, living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat.

Orlando Gibbons

Please accept a promise from me in his name that I will always live in the religion in which he died.

Giacomo Meyerbeer

"Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the "given" material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control."

To do good whenever one can, to love liberty above all else, never to deny the truth, even though it be before the throne.

Ludwig van Beethoven

I too had to work hard, so as not to have to work hard any longer.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.

Johann Sebastian Bach

According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to everyone his own value.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

This fact, the surfacing of structure in an undeliberate action, is too big to take on here, but it was enough to convince me that the structuralists—the advocates of planning music before you hear or care what the plan gives you—were right: do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

Gioachino Rossini

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.

Arthur Honegger

I'm goin' to Tishomingo,
Because I'm sad today.
I wish to linger,
Way down old Dixie way.
Oh my weary heart cries out in pain,
Oh how I wish that I was back again.
With a race,
In a place,
Where they make you welcome all the time.

Spencer Williams

Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?

Richard Rodgers

Have another little piece of my heart now baby, You know you got it if it makes you feel good.

Men grow cold as girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end.
But square cut or pear shape,
These rocks won't lose their shape,
Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

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.

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

A cook, when I dine, seems to me a divine being, who from the depths of his kitchen rules the human race. One considers him as a minister of heaven, because his kitchen is a temple, in which his ovens are the altar.

Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers

My boyfriend dumped me. My best friend won't talk to me. My future is in a garbage can. Everything has turned to crap. Can you please just let me be a sullen teenager. just this once

I believe that most of what was said of God was in reality said of that Spirit whose body is Earth.

George W. E. Russell

Someone once said that the two most important things in developing taste were sensitivity and intelligence. I don't think this is so; I'd rather call them curiosity and courage. Curiosity to look for the new and the hidden; courage to develop your own tastes regardless of what others might say or think.

R. Murray Schafer

It appears to me that they who in proof of any assertion rely simply on the weight of authority, without adducing any argument in support of it, act very absurdly. I, on the contrary, wish to be allowed freely to question and freely to answer you without any sort of adulation, as well becomes those who are in search of truth.

Vincenzo Galilei

If you're in jazz and more than ten people like you, you're labelled commercial.