Beethoven Quotes

• After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

  

  Zubin Mehta
  • Like
  • Beethoven
  • Wagner

• Some people think a song without words isn't a real song. Tell that to Beethoven and he'll kick your ass!

  

  Eddie Van Halen Van Halen
  • People
  • Song
  • Words

• Beethoven and Beatles, Mozart and Michael Jackson, Paganini and Prince - I like them all.

  

  Vanessa Mae
  • Like
  • Prince
  • Beatles

• If Beethoven and Bach hooked up with Mozart and made a band, they could be a distant runner up to The D.

  

  Jack Black
  • Up
  • Band
  • Hooked

• I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

  

  Ringo Starr The Beatles
  • Poems
  • Beethoven

• ...stories about [the German composer Johannes] Brahms's rudeness and wit amused me in particular. For instance, I loved the one about how a great wine connoisseur invited the composer to dinner. 'This is the Brahms of my cellar,' he said to his guests, producing a dust-covered bottle and pouring some into the master's glass. Brahms looked first at the color of the wine, then sniffed its bouquet, finally took a sip, and put the glass down without saying a word. 'Don't you like it?' asked the host. 'Hmm,' Brahms muttered. 'Better bring your Beethoven!'

  

  Arthur Rubinstein
  • Great
  • Color
  • Wine

• My own duty as a teacher...is not so much to interpret Beethoven, Wagner, or other masters of the past, but to give what encouragement I can to the young musicians of America. I...hope that just as this nation has already surpassed so many others in marvelous inventions and feats of engineering and commerce, and has made an honorable place for itself in literature in one short century, so it must assert itself on the...art of music...To bring about this result, we must trust the very youthful enthusiasm and patriotism of this country.

  

  Antonin Dvorak
  • Music
  • Country
  • Art

• Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

  

  John Ruskin
  • Hammer
  • Bag
  • Beethoven

• If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.

  

  Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Poetry
  • Pictures
  • Shakespeare

• I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

  

  Alfred de Musset
  • Believe
  • Art
  • Beauty

• During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please . . . please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!"

  

  James Keller
  • Members
  • Orchestra
  • Ninth Symphony

• I cannot listen to Beethoven or Mahler or Chopin or Bach when I write because those composers require you stop what you are doing and listen.

  

  Antonio Damasio
  • Stop
  • Composers
  • Bach

• I play Beethoven and Bach. At the same time, Biggie is my dog.

  

  Alicia Keys
  • Time
  • Play
  • Dog

• We built a bit of an audience at our university in Cambridge, playing Beethoven and Mozart quartets.

  

  Grace Chatto
  • Audience
  • Built
  • Mozart

• We always talk about how everyone is unifocal. You can't possibly be interested in jazz and Beethoven. Of course you can. You can't both be reading a newspaper and be online. Of course you can. We shouldn't be obsessed with a gun to your head, 'You either read a newspaper or die!'

  

  Harold Evans
  • Interested
  • Jazz
  • Unifocal

• The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary. rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise.

  

  George Bernard Shaw
  • Handel
  • Brahms
  • Voluptuary

• Artur Schnabel, one of the towering pianists of the twentieth century. Modified in tone but not spirit from Schnabel’s interview remarks in Chicago the same year Germany surrendered to the Allies. She also knew this was about as high a compliment as Paul Mandelbaum was capable of making. Schnabel’s performances of the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas were possibly the only thing her mentor was capable of carrying on about ad nauseam. You were never going to enter his pantheon of star pupils unless you gave yourself over, heart and soul, to Schnabel’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Klaviersonaten and the virtuoso’s idea that the greatest music was that which is “better than it can be performed.

  

  Bradford Morrow
  • Music
  • Spirit
  • Idea

• I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.

  

  Frederic Chopin
  • Fingers
  • Long Time
  • Beethoven

• Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.

  

  John Ruskin
  • Beauty
  • Beethoven
  • Fain

• I am Jewish, but Beethoven is my religion.

  

  Alice Herz-Sommer
  • Religion
  • Beethoven

• At first I thought I should be a second Beethoven; presently I found that to be another Schubert would be good; then gradually, satisfied with less and less, I resigned to be a Humperdinck.

  

  Engelbert Humperdinck
  • Beethoven
  • Resigned
  • Schubert

• I don't get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good - Bach, Beethoven - yes, good.

  

  Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Inspiration
  • Musicians
  • Especially

• I think that the existence of Beethoven is remarkable, but I do not bristle at the suggestion that this event had a low probability given the initial state of the universe.

  

  Elliott Sober
  • Universe
  • Existence
  • I Think

• Beethoven was always too much. He's not slightly anything - he's very everything.

  

  Simon Rattle
  • Everything
  • Too Much
  • Beethoven