Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Quotes on Mozart

63 quotes

3. The most stimulating and encouraging thought is that you, dearest father, and my dear sister, are well, that I am an honest German, and that if I am not always permitted to talk I can think what I please; but that is all.

5. A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.

6. As I love Mannheim, Mannheim loves me.

9. I care very little for Salzburg and not at all for the archbishop: I shit on both of them.

11. It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.

13. Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: 'Chi sa piu, meno sa- Who knows most, knows least.

15. I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

16. Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

17. Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

18. When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep - it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.

19. It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.

23. Mozart's music is free of all exaggeration, of all sharp breaks and contradictions. The sun shines but does not blind, does not burn or consume. Heaven arches over the earth, but it does not weigh it down, it does not crush or devour it.

27. Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair.

28. Mozart, prodigal heaven gave thee everything, grace and strength, abundance and moderation, perfect equilibrium.

29. Who has reached the extreme limits of scale with the same infallible precision, equally guarded against the false refinement of artificial elegance and the roughness of spurious force? Who has better known how to breathe anguish and dread into the purest and most exquisite forms?

30. Mozart exists, and will exist, eternally; divine Mozart - less a name, more a soul descending to us from the heavens, who appeared on this earth, stayed for a little over thirty years, and left it all the more rejuvenated, richer and happier for his appearance.

31. As with all great artists, Mozart expressed not only the soul, the taste and the aroma of his epoch, but also the spiritual world of man-man for all ages, in all the complexity of his desires, his struggles and ambivalence. Some of us, who only identify in Mozart a certain aristocratic refinement, may find these words strange. Often we meet with a condescending attitude towards him, to his music, reminiscent of chiming bells in a music box! ...'It's very nice, but not for me' say such people, 'give me passion - Beethoven, Brahms, tragic, monumental...' Such comments only reveal one thing, these people don't know Mozart.

33. Lengthy immersion in the works of other composers can tire. The music of Mozart does not tire, and this is one of its miracles.

34. Listening to Mozart, we cannot think of any possible improvement.

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

37. Mozart is the musical Christ.

38. Mozart tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what it's like to be Beethoven and Bach tells us what it's like to be the universe. ~ Douglas Adams

39. Mozart has the classic purity of light and the red ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both. ~ Henri-Frederic Amiel

40. Mozart shows a creative power of such magnitude that one can virtually say that he tossed out of himself one great masterpiece after another. ~ Claudio Arrau

41. Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible. ~ Allan Bloom

43. In my dreams of heaven, I always see the great Masters gathered in a huge hall in which they all reside. Only Mozart has his own suite. ~ Victor Borge

44. Together with the puzzle, Mozart gives you the solution. ~ Ferruccio Busoni

45. If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity. ~ Johannes Brahms

46. It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace. ~ Johannes Brahms

47. Mozart encompasses the entire domain of musical creation, but I've got only the keyboard in my poor head. ~ Frederic Chopin

48. Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness. ~ Aaron Copland

52. Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it - that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed. ~ Albert Einstein

53. Mozart's music is particularly difficult to perform. His admirable clarity exacts absolute cleanness: the slightest mistake in it stands out like black on white. It is music in which all the notes must be heard. ~ Gabriel Faure

55. Mozart's joy is made of serenity, and a phrase of his music is like a calm thought; his simplicity is merely purity. It is a crystalline thing in which all the emotions play a role, but as if already celestially transposed. Moderation consists in feeling emotions as the angels do. ~ Andre Gide

56. A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

57. Mozart did not die too early, but rather too late. ~ Glenn Gould

58. For one moment in the history of music all opposites were reconciled; all tensions resolved; that luminous moment was Mozart. ~ Phil Goulding

59. In Mozart's music, all intensity are crystallized in the clearest, the most beautifully balanced and proportioned, and altogether flawless musical forms. ~ Phil Goulding

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

63. The riddle of Mozart is precisely that 'the man' refuses to be a key for solving it. In death, as in life, he conceals himself behind his work. ~ Wolfgang Hildesheimer

64. Mozart's music is the mysterious language of a distant spiritual kingdom, whose marvelous accents echo in our inner being and arouse a higher, intensive life. ~ E.T.A. Hoffmann

65. Mozart said profound things and at the same time remained flippant and lively. ~ Michael Kennedy

68. The works of Mozart may be easy to read, but they are very difficult to interpret. The least speck of dust spoils them. They are clear, transparent, and joyful as a spring, and not only those muddy pools which seem deep only because the bottom cannot be seen. ~ Wanda Landowska

70. Mozart is happiness before it has gotten defined. ~ Arthur Miller

71. Mozart wrote everything with such ease and speed as might at first be taken for carelessness or haste. His imagination held before him the whole work clear and lively once it was conceived. One seldom finds in his scores improved or erased passages. ~ Franz Niemetschek

72. There was nothing exceptional about the physical presence of this extraordinary man; he was small and his appearance gave no sign of his genius, apart from his large intense eyes. [...] But in this ungainly body there dwelt an artistic genius such as Nature rarely bestows even upon her most treasured darlings. ~ Franz Niemetschek

75. Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece. ~ Camille Saint-Saens

76. What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-efficient. ~ Camille Saint-Saens

77. Mozart is the most inaccessible of the great masters. ~ Artur Schnabel

78. The sonatas of Mozart are unique: too easy for children, too difficult for adults. Children are given Mozart to play because of the quantity of notes; grown-ups avoid him because of the quality of notes. ~ Artur Schnabel

79. A light, bright, fine day this will remain throughout my whole life. As from afar, the magic notes of Mozart's music still gently haunts me. ~ Franz Schubert

80. A world that has produced a Mozart is a world worth saving. What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart! ~ Franz Schubert

81. Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them? ~ Robert Schumann

83. The best of Mozart's works cannot be even slightly rewritten without diminishment. ~ Peter Shaffer

84. What was evident was that Mozart was simply written down music already finished in his head. And music, finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall. I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute beauty. ~ Peter Shaffer (spoken by Antonio Salieri in Shaffer's play Amadeus and slightly reworded in the movie adaptation of the play)

85. Mozart's music represents neither the prolonged sigh of faith that characterizes so much of the music written before his time, nor the stormy idealism which cloaks most music after him. Rather he is that mercurial balance of the skeptic and the humane. Like him, and in him, we can always discover new worlds. ~ Joseph Solman

86. Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces. ~ Georg Solti

87. Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy. ~ Stendhal

88. I listened to the pure crystalline notes of one of Mozart's concertos dropping at my feet like leaves from the trees. ~ Virgil Thomson

89. Mozart touched no problem without solving it to perfection. ~ Donald Francis Tovey

91. Mozart's music is very mysterious. ~ Walter J. Turner

92. The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters, in all centuries and in all the arts. ~ Richard Wagner

93. I never heard so much content in so short a period. ~ Pinchas Zukerman

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