24 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Quotes

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky quotes

1. What I need is to believe in myself again- for my faith has been greatly undermined; it seems to me my role is over.

2. Just as I was starting on my journey the idea came to me for a new symphony, this time with a program, but a program which will remain an enigma to all- let them guess it who can. It will be called 'A Programmatic Symphony' (No. 6). During my trip, while composing in my mind, I frequently shed tears. When I got home I settled down to sketch it, and the work went so furiously that I had the first movement completely ready in less than four days and the remaining movements are already clearly outlined in my head. Half the third movement is already done. There will be much innovation of form in this symphony- and incidentally, the finale will not be a noisy allegro but, on the contrary, a long drawn-out adagio. You can't imagine what bliss I feel, being convinced that my time is not yet passed and I can still work. Perhaps, of course, I'm mistaken, but I don't think so.

3. I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.

4. Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

5. The creative process is like music which takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity.

6. Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

7. Delibes' rich score for Sylvia led Tchaikovsky to declare that Swan Lake was 'poor stuff in comparison'.

8. I like listening to it just as I like looking at a fuschia drenched with rain.

1. I have put my whole soul into this work [The Pathetique Symphony] . . . You cannot imagine what joy I feel at the thought that my days are not yet over and that I may still accomplish much.

2. Only music clarifies, reconciles, and consoles. But it is not a straw just barely clutched at. It is a faithful friend, protector, and comforter, and for its sake alone, life in this world is worth living. Who knows, perhaps in heaven there will be no music. So let us live on the earth while we still have life!

3. How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

4. Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.

5. Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.

6. Mozart is the musical Christ.

7. Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods.

8. Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity which, independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on, continues its course in that department of my brain that is devoted to music.

9. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

10. When Brahms is in extra good spirits, he sings, "The grave is my joy".

11. The muse doesn't come without being called.

12. What I have set down in a moment of ardour I must then critically examine. Sometimes I must do myself violence before I can mercilessly erase things thought out with love.

13. Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music.

14. It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.

15. Brahms stayed an extra day to hear my [Fifth] Symphony and was very kind ... I like his honesty and open-mindedness. Neither he nor the players liked the finale, which I also think rather horrible.

16. I feel I shall live a long time.