Johannes Brahms Quotes

Germany, Composer
May 7, 1833 – April, 3, 1897.

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

Also known as Pianist

Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.

Johannes Brahms
- Trying
- Bad
- Health
There is so much that is true in your letter - if not all- and I must confess that with remorse and regret; but with pleasure and satisfaction I realise how kind it is - only an angel like you could have written so kindly... Life is a wild polyphony, but often a good woman like you can bring about some exquisite resolution of its discords.

Johannes Brahms
- Life
- Good
- True

High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousandfold.

Johannes Brahms
- High
- Deep
- Mountain
We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.

Johannes Brahms
Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Johannes Brahms
- Inspiration
- Craftsmanship
On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.

Johannes Brahms
- World
- Mind
- Experience
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.

Johannes Brahms
Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration.

Johannes Brahms
- God
- Mind

A symphony is no joke.

Johannes Brahms
It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

Johannes Brahms
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.

Johannes Brahms
- Real
I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.

Johannes Brahms