Johannes Brahms Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
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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.
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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.
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High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousandfold.
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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.
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It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.
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If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
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A symphony is no joke.
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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.
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I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.