The good composer is slowly discovered, the bad composer is slowly found out.
The function of pop music is to be consumed.
Oboe - an ill woodwind that nobody blows good.
Music first and last should sound well, should allure and enchant the ear. Never mind the inner significance.
I am tired before the concert, not afterward.
Music, the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below.
What we play is life.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides!
Chamber music - a conversation between friends.
Mozart is the human incarnation of the divine force of creation.
I write as a sow piddles.
I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
Harpists spend half their life tuning and the other half playing out of tune.
She was an aging singer who had to take every note above 'A' with her eyebrows.
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it and that a very severe one.
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.