Quotes about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

107 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

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

On Pushkin's drama Mozart and Salieri:

We see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can.

We often say that psi is like musical ability: it is widely distributed in the populate, and everyone has some ability and can participate to some extent - in the same way that the most nonmusical person can learn to play a little Mozart on the piano. On the other hand, there is no substitute for innate talent, and there is no substitute for practice.

The riddle of Mozart is precisely that "the man" refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work.

Wolfgang Hildesheimer

Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

Leonard Bernstein

To say that Einstein formulated a theory of relativity by guesswork is on all fours with saying that Wordsworth wrote rhymes and Mozart tuneful music. It is cheeky where something grave is called for.

I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death.

Ludwig van Beethoven

What was evident was that Mozart was simply transcribing music completely finished in his head. And finished as most music is never finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at Absolute Beauty.

Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

Albert Einstein

A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel.

According to my deep conviction, Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music. No one has made me weep, has made me tremble with rapture, from the consciousness of my nearness to that something which we call the ideal, as he has done.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

How can such a disproportionately large number of people have a definite, and unusually positive relationship to Mozart?

Wolfgang Hildesheimer

Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.

Albert Einstein

If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no practice at all, he might truly have been said to have done so instinctively.

Maybe I should write some songs like Mozart
'Cause many people don't believe rap is an art.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed — a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight.

Skeptics squat by the road like guardians of truth, letting no one pass who doesn't come up to scratch. They never realize that they can see only what their paradigm tells them to look for. If you judge a person only by how well he plays pool, Mozart won't pass scrutiny, but the fault is in your lens.

Mozart, the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste.

Friedrich Nietzsche

That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

And I think the job of a leader is not to try to do everything yourself, but it's to try to organize people, each of whom have different talents and skills. Make sure that they are joined in a common vision about what needs to get done, but then go ahead and let them — give them the tools so that they can do what they need to do. [...] Very few things, great things are done by yourself. Maybe if you're a Picasso or Mozart you can go off into a room and you can produce great things. But most great accomplishments, human accomplishments, they're done as a group. And you're job as a leader then, is to be able to assemble to bring together people in a common vision.

Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.

A mathematician will recognize Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi, of Helmholz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognize, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven, or Schubert.

Ludwig Boltzmann

Mozart creates music from a mysterious center, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation.

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art.

No one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effects. If you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it.

Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.

The revolutionary Mozart is the Mozart of his last eight years.

Wolfgang Hildesheimer

It can be a work by Mondrian, a piece of music by Schönberg or Mozart, a painting by Leonardo, Barnett Newman or also Jackson Pollock. That's beautiful to me. But also nature. A person can be beautiful as well. And beauty is also defined as 'untouched'. Indeed, that's an ideal: that we humans are untouched and therefore beautiful.

Gerhard Richter