Music Quotes:

• "He'd be better off shoveling snow."--Richard Strauss on Arnold Schoenberg.

• When told that a soloist would need six fingers to perform his concerto, Arnold Schoenberg replied, "I can wait."

• "I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony."--James Sellars

• "Exit in case of Brahms"--Philip Hale's proposed inscription over the doors of Boston Symphony Hall.

• "Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?"--Igor Stravinsky

• "His music used to be original. Now it's aboriginal."--Sir Ernest Newman on Igor Stravinsky

• "If he'd been making shellcases during the war it might have been better for music."--Maurice Ravel on Camille SaintSaens

• "He has an enormously wide repertory. He can conduct anything, provided it's by Beethoven, Brahms or Wagner. He tried Debussy's La Mer once. It came out as Das Merde."--Anonymous Orchestra Member on George Szell

• Someone commented to Rudolph Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera, that George Szell is his own worst enemy. "Not while I'm alive, he isn't!" said Bing.

• "After I die, I shall return to earth as a gatekeeper of a bordello and I won't let any of you in."--Arturo Toscanini to the NBC Orchestra

• "We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again."--Sir Thomas Beecham to a musician during a rehearsal

• "Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night. Mendelssohn lost."--Anonymous

• The great German conductor Hans von Buelow detested two members of an orchestra, who were named Schultz and Schmidt. Upon being told that Schmidt had died, von Buelow immediately asked, "Und Schultz?"

• "Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed."--Ralph Novak on Yoko Ono

• "Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20."--David Randolph

• "One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time."--Gioacchino Rossini

• "I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music."--Benjamin Britten on Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress

• "Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on."--Sir Thomas Beecham on an unidentified soprano in Die Walkyre

• "My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer."--Cole Porter

• "Don't bother to look, I've composed that already."--Gustav Mahler to Bruno Walter, who had stopped to admire mountain scenery in rural Austria.

• "I would rather play 'Chiquita Banana' and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve."--Xavier Cugat

• "(Musicians) talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art."--Jean Sibelius, explaining why he rarely invited musicians to his home.

• "The amount of money one needs is terrifying."--Ludwig Van Beethoven

• "I am not handsome, but when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet."--Niccolo Paganini

• "Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you bought two or three seats."--Victor Borge, playing to a half-filled house in Flint, Mich.

• "If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation."--Oscar Wilde

• "Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together."--Mel Brooks

• "Life can't be all bad when for 10 dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for 10 years."--William F. Buckley Jr.

• "You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow."--Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket

• "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."--Mark Twain

• "I love Beethoven, especially the poems."--Ringo Starr

• "If a young man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder."--Walter Damrosch on Aaron Copland

• "There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major."--Sergei Prokofiev

• "I never use a score when conducting my orchestra. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?"--Dimitri Mitropoulos

• "God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way."--Arturo Toscanini to a trumpet player

• "Already too loud!" Bruno Walter at his first rehearsal with an American orchestra, as the players reached for their instruments

• "I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere."--Frederic Chopin

• "When she started to play, Steinway himself came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano."--Bob Hope, on comedienne Phyllis Diller

• "Never look at the trombones; it only encourages them."--Richard Strauss

• "In opera, there is always too much singing."--Claude Debussy

• Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -- Berthold Auerbach

• Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. -- G. K. Chesterton

• Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below. -- Joseph Addison

• Musicians talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art. -- Jean Sibelius, explaining why he rarely invited musicians to his home.

• My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a producer. -- Cole Porter

• Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them. -- Richard Strauss

• No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. -- W. H. Auden

• Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning. -- Chopin.

• Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. -- Samuel Johnson

• Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day. -- Ringo Starr

• Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk. -- Oscar Wilde

• Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers! -- Gioacchino Rossini

• One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time. -- Gioacchino Rossini

• One should try everything once, except incest and folk-dancing. -- Arnold Bax

• Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living. -- Kirke Mecham, on his life as a composer

• Only sick music makes money today. -- Nietzsche

• Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. -- Robert Benchley

• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts. -- Percy Shelley

• Parsifal - the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20. -- David Randolph

• People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least while the music lasts. -- Paul Hindemith

• People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet. -- Witold Lutoslawski

• Plato defines melody to consist of harmony, number and words: harmony naked of itself, words the ornament of harmony, number the common friend and uniter of them both. -- J. Dowland

• Please write music like Wagner, only louder. -- Sam Goldwyn, instructing a composer for a movie.

• Rhythm, the primitive and predominating element of all Art. -- d'Indy

• Richard Wagner wrote music which is better than it sounds. -- Mark Twain

• Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside. -- Ludwig van Beethoven

• Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet. -- Bertolt Brecht

• Sir Thomas Beecham was once asked if he had played any Stockhausen. "No", he replied, "but I have trodden in some".

• Someone commented to Rudolph Bing, manager of the Metropolitan Opera, that "George Szell is his own worst enemy." "Not while I'm alive, he isn't!" said Bing.

• Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear. -- Billy Gibbons

• Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education. -- Cardinal Newman

• The amount of money one needs is terrifying... -- Ludwig van Beethoven

• The art of dramatic writing is to compose a melodic curve which will, as if by magic, reveal immediately a human being in one definite phase of his existence. -- Janacek

• The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously. -- Philip Larkin

• The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two. -- Ambrose Bierce

• The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it. -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

• The English do not like music but love the noise it makes. -- Sir Thomas Beecham

• The great German conductor Hans von Buelow detested two members of an orchestra, who were named Schultz and Schmidt. Upon being told that Schmidt had died, von Buelow immediately asked, Und Schultz?

• The high note is not the only thing. -- Placido Domingo

• The history of a people is found in its songs. -- George Jellinek

• The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet. -- Jeffrey Tate

• The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch which is the true objective ... Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody, to Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete', for instance. You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, even farther. -- R. Strauss

• The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin. -- G. Ade

• The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and lifestyle. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud. -- George Steiner

• The present day composer refuses to die. -- Edgar Varese

• The purpose of music is to draw toward a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate. -- Xenakis

• The sound of a harpsichord - two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm. -- Sir Thomas Beecham

• The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on. -- Frank Zappa

• The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No." -- Aaron Copland

William S. Carson, D.M.A -- Chair, Department of Music -- Director of Bands
Coe College -- 1220 First Ave. NE Cedar Rapids, IA 52402
Toll Free:1-877-CALL-COE / Office: 319-399-8520 / FAX: 319-399-8209
bands@coe.edu / JazzSummit@coe.edu / wcarson@coe.edu
www.coe.edu/bands / www.coe.edu/JazzSummit / www.public.coe.edu/~wcarson