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The English may not like music, but they absolutely love
the noise it makes.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is
that he be dead.
- Arthur Honegger
The sound of a harpsichord: two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a
thunderstorm.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.
- Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, on George Frederick Handel
Ah, Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't.
- Victor Borge, on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I
don't understand.
- Sir Edward Appleton
Where did these turkeys learn to write music, anyway?
- 'Comoedia' (1913) on Igor Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring'
I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy as much as this.
- Musical Times, (1921) on Igor Stravinsky's 'Symphony for Wind - Memory of
Debussy'
His music used to be original. Now it's aboriginal.
- Sir Ernest Newman on Igor Stravinsky
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here
and there an also dropped hammer.
- John Ruskin
Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
- Kin Hubbard
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
- Dame Edith Sitwell
The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
- Victor Borge
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I
don't understand.
- Edward Appleton
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling
sensible.
- W. H. Auden
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
- Voltaire
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail
outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
- Charles Baudelaire, on Richard Wagner
It gives us, for the first time, the hideous notion that there can be music
which stinks to the ear.
- Eduardo Hanslick, on Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's 'Violin Concerto'
Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night. Mendelssohn lost.
- Anonymous
Beethoven's last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened
to by a deaf man.
- Sir Thomas Beecham, on Ludwig van Beethoven
Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.
- Samuel Johnson, on hearing a famous violinist. |
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