"Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" (Liszt) (beginning)
"On the Beach at Bali-Bali" (Al Sherman, Abner Silver and Jack Maskill)
"Prelude in C-Sharp Minor" (Rachmaninoff)
"Piano Sonata No. 15 in C major" (Mozart)
"Minuet in G major, WoO 10, No. 2" (Beethoven)
Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.
Mozart Horn Concerto No 3 In E Flat Major K 447 Allegro
Haydn Horn Concerto No. 2 in D, Hob. VIId/4 Allegro movements
Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein! (Must it be? It must be! It must be!)
– Ludwig van Beethoven, comment written on the finale of his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.)
– Ludwig van Beethoven, on his deathbed, 1827I’m a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.
– Frédéric Chopin, quoted in Arthur Headley, Chopin (1947)After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.
– Oscar Wilde, 1891Le concert, c’est moi.
– Franz Liszt, writing to the Princess Belgiojoso on his launch of a new kind of public concert: the solo recital; quoted by Alfred Brendel in The New York Review of Books (22 Nov 1990)A smasher of pianos.
– Clara Schumann on Liszt, quoted in Alan Walker, Robert Schumann: the Man and his Music (1972)O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life have you left in our souls!
– Franz Schubert, Diary, 1816
Mozart should have composed Faust.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (1827)
He roused my admiration when I was young; he caused me to despair when I reached maturity; he is now the comfort of my old age.
– Gioachino Rossini on Mozart
Mozart is sunshine.
Antonin Dvorak, quoted in Otakar Sourek (ed.), Antonin Dvorak: Letters and Reminiscences (1954)
The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.
– Arthur Schnabel
Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.
– Aaron Copland, Copland on Music (1960)
It is sobering to think that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead a year
– Tom Lehrer (speaking of Mozart’s early death at the age of just 35 years)His character was a mixture of tenderness and coarseness, sensuality and candour, sociability and melancholy.
– Johann Mayrhofer on Schubert; quoted in Westrup, Schubert Music (1969)
Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music.
Tchaikovsky
A world that has produced a Mozart is a world worth saving. What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart!
Schubert
Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day!
Rossini
Mozart’s music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life.
E.T.A. Hoffman
Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: ‘Chi sa più, meno sa— Who knows most, knows least.
Mozart (spoken to actor Michael Kelly)
I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death.
Ludwig van Beethoven
“ I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired.
— Richard Wagner.
“ Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream.
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“No one feels another’s grief, no one understands another’s joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”
— Franz Schubert
“I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can.”
— Franz Schubert
