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Piano Board => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: justinjalandoni on July 12, 2008, 02:22:06 PM

Title: Quotes from Composers
Post by: justinjalandoni on July 12, 2008, 02:22:06 PM
Here are some quotes from various composers. Feel free to add some more

Schubert

    * No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

    * When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

    * When all hopes of recognition or honor have faded into distant memory, when purity of heart meets sorrow of mind, when all the world seems to walk in blindness and yet a man works without wearying for that which he loves...only in this moment is passion truly understood.

Liszt
    * Any chord can follow any chord.
         
    * Génie oblige! (Genius obliges!)
     
    * "le piano concentre et résume en lui l'art tout entier..." (the piano concentrates and sums up art in him entirely.)


Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: schartmanovich on July 13, 2008, 09:59:29 PM

Liszt
    * Any chord can follow any chord.
         

Liszt is completely right...it's too bad that so many people misinterpret what he said.
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: eastman_grad on July 18, 2008, 01:32:29 PM
Liszt is completely right...it's too bad that so many people misinterpret what he said.

You're right on the money. What Liszt meant was that, yes, any chord can follow any other; the third chord is where it becomes difficult. Roger Sessions once made a great remark:

"Anyone can write two measures of Mozart, but only Mozart can write three."
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: pianowolfi on July 18, 2008, 08:15:20 PM
Music is born only in the heart and it appeals only to the heart. Sergej Rachmaninoff


I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven, letter to F G Wegeler, 1801
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: dnephi on July 19, 2008, 07:36:44 AM
Liszt is completely right...it's too bad that so many people misinterpret what he said.
Actually, that was Reger.
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: oscarr111111 on July 20, 2008, 10:37:32 PM
You're right on the money. What Liszt meant was that, yes, any chord can follow any other; the third chord is where it becomes difficult. Roger Sessions once made a great remark:

"Anyone can write two measures of Mozart, but only Mozart can write three."

I would have interpreted it as an observation that the 'rules' of music theory are just guidelines, and that they can be broken willingly at the judgment of the composer.
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: tanman on July 20, 2008, 11:36:39 PM
isn't there another thread like this somewhere?

anyway...

"I'm hungry"
- Rachmaninoff  8)
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: thalberg on July 21, 2008, 05:07:38 AM
If you are not interested in scales, work on them until you become interested.

---I forgot who...perhaps Rachmaninoff
Title: Re: Quotes from Composers
Post by: 0range on July 22, 2008, 10:38:12 PM
I recently saw a performance by Marc-Andre Hamelin in which he played a wonderful Villa-Lobos piece "Rudepoema". After the recital I had a few questions for him regarding his interpretation and here is what he had to say:

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?"

-Marc-Andre Hamelin

 ;D