Beethoven Quotes

What you are, you are by accident of birth;

what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven.

But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark.

All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles.

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

When Claude Debussy studied at the Paris Conservatory from age ten to age twenty-two, many considered him a rebel because of his treatment of dissonance and his disdain for the established forms. He reputedly turned to a fellow student during a performance of Beethoven with the words, "Let's go. He's starting to develop.

Beethoven’s music always struck me.

Always. He had this fire you know. I remember reading this story of him going deaf and pushing himself into self-isolation and that’s where he became himself. And to me that was, wow. Don’t let anything poison your individuality. Be away, break away and look in not outward.

And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by Debussy. I don't play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons.

First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart.

The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends.

The Germans have four violin concertos.

The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven’s. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars.

Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.

A mathematician will recognise Cauchy, Gauss, Jacobi or Helmholtz after reading a few pages, just as musicians recognise, from the first few bars, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert.

If Beethoven were sent to nursery school today, they would medicate him, and he would be a postal clerk.

My music wasn't written by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Schubert.

It's written by God and me. They go "a one and a two and up." We start on the downbeat. Bam! And that's where we got them.

Western culture is what gave us Mozart, and Da Vinci, and Wagner, and Beethoven.

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.

I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.

I see less and less... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.

In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct.

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

What do we teach our children? . . . We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique . . . You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.

Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you.

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.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Mozart is a garden, Schubert is a forest in light and shade, but Beethoven is a mountain range.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or "New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame.

If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.