Richard Wagner Quotes

Richard Wagner presents lofty, dramatic ideas about music, drama and art.

34 quotes

1. The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

2. Music has taken a bad turn; these young people have no idea how to write a melody, they just give us shavings, which they dress up to look like a lion's mane and shake at us... It's as if they avoid melodies, for fear of having perhaps stolen them from someone else.

3. It should not be presumed that these people (the Jews), who are so separated from us by their religion, have any right to make our laws. But why blame the Jews? It is we who lack all feeling for our own identity, all sense of honour.

4. I am writing Parsifal only for my wife -- if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say.

5. Oh, I hate the thought of all those costumes and grease paint! When I think that characters like Kundry will now have to be dressed up, those dreadful artists' balls immediately spring into my mind. Having created the invisible orchestra, I now feel like inventing the invisible theatre!

6. Certain things in Mozart will and can never be excelled.

7. This is Alberich's dream come true -- Nibelheim, world dominion, activity, work, everywhere the oppressive feeling of steam and fog.

8. It is necessary for us to explain the involuntary repugnance we possess for the nature and personality of the Jews....

9. The Jews have never produced a true poet. Heinrich Heine reached the point where he duped himself into a poet, and was rewarded by his versified lies being set to music by our own composers. He was the conscience of Judaism, just as Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization.

10. I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven.

11. From wisdom, understanding. From understanding, compassion. From compassion, love.

12. I believe that through art all men are saved.

13. I know absolutely nothing about music.

14. I write music with an exclamation mark!

15. Joy is not in things; it is in us.

16. I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts - the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.

17. Wagner's music is better than it sounds - Mark Twain

18. Wagner has great moments but dull quarter hours - Rossini

19. Every time I listen to Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland - Woody Allen

20. My destiny is solitude, and my life is work.

21. The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.

22. Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.

23. What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.

24. Here, everything is tragic through and through, and the will, that fain would shape a world according to its wish, at last can reach no greater satisfaction than the breaking of itself in dignified annulment.

25. I have only a mind to live, to enjoy - i.e., to work as an artist, and produce my works; but not for the muddy brains of the common herd.

26. Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

27. From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilisations, to enjoy his prey at rest.

28. When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain.

29. The measures and acts which show us violently disposed towards the outer world can never stay without a violent reaction on ourselves.

30. We find personal success and great, if not enduring, influence on the outer fashioning of the world allotted to the violent, the passionate individual who, unchaining the elemental principles of human impulse under favoring circumstances, points out to greed and self-indulgence the speedy pathways to their satisfaction.

31. Many's the man/ who thought himself wise/ but what he needed/ he did not know...

32. Music truely has to all other arts the same relation as religion to the church.

33. Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

34. I know nothing at all about music.