French Composer Quotes

Hector Berlioz

Claude Debussy

Georges Bizet

Erik Satie

Michel Legrand

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Edgard Varèse

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 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.

Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Myth does not set out to give lessons in natural science any more than in morals or sociology.

François-Bernard Mâche

And Music is an art which likes people to laugh and sing and dance. It cares nothing for melancholy, nor for a man who sorrows over what is of no importance, but ignores, instead, such folk. It brings joy everywhere it's present; it comforts the disconsolate, and just hearing it makes people rejoice.

Guillaume de Machaut

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.

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.

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.

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

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"?

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.

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.

I'm becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous…nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do… no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can't see the point or goal.

Charles-Valentin Alkan

The birds are the opposite of time. They represent our longing for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant song.

Olivier Messiaen

To arms! to arms! ye brave!
The avenging sword unsheathe!
March on! march on! all hearts resolved
On victory or death!

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle

Jazz is the best of all nourishments. It feeds the creative spirit like nothing else can.