Russian Composer Quotes

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Sergei Prokofiev

Modest Mussorgsky

Alexander Borodin

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 real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.

Dmitri Shostakovich

This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.

Sergei Prokofiev

In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.

Modest Mussorgsky

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

Alexander Borodin

Orchestration is part of the very soul of the work. A work is thought out in terms of the orchestra, certain tone-colors being inseparable from it in the mind of its creator and native to it from the hour of its birth.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov