a compilation of some of my favourite composer quotes:
“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” - Igor Stravinsky
“I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.” - Edvard Grieg
“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.” - Richard Strauss
“He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” - Richard Strauss on Schoenberg
“I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.” - Ludvig van Beethoven
“I have written a chorale both sober and suitable. In it I have put everything I know about boredom. I dedicate this to those who do not like me.” - Erik Satie
“
Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.” - Gioacchino Rossini
“What a good thing this isn’t music.” - Gioacchino Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
“Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!” - Gioacchino Rossini
“In opera there is always too much singing.” - Claude Debussy
“Bring me coffee before I turn into a goat!” - Johann Sebastian Bach
“Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” - Aaron Copland
“The audience expected something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” - Louis Schnieder on Debussy’s La Mer
“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” - Clara Schumann on Liszt
“What a giftless bastard!” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Brahms
“Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“Bach on the wrong notes” -
Sergei Prokofiev on Stravinsky
And, saving the best for last…
“Lick my ass up and down” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Feel free to add more! (Also please don’t think that I agree with all of these, I am a huge fan of Symphonie Fantastique and La Mer!!)
“I am in the smallest room in my house. Your review is in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.” - Max Reger
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