Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Quotes on Music

61 quotes

1. The most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time.

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.

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.

21. Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.

22. Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity.

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.

24. It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

25. Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

26. Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

27. Before Mozart, all ambition turns to despair.

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

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.

35. I find consolation and rest in Mozart's music, wherein he gives expression to that joy of life which was part of his sane and wholesome temperament.

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

42. Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does. ~ Roy Blount, Jr.

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

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

49. Mozart does not give the listener time to catch his breath, for no sooner is one inclined to reflect upon a beautiful inspiration than another appears, even more splendid, which drives away the first, and this continues on and on, so that in the end one is unable to retain any of these beauties in the memory. ~ Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf

51. Mozart is sweet sunshine. ~ Antonin Dvorak

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

54. There are three things in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni. ~ Gustave Flaubert

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

62. How can such a disproportionately large number of people have a definite, and unusually positive relationship to Mozart? ~ Wolfgang Hildesheimer

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

66. Mozart has reached the boundary gate of music and leaped over it, leaving behind the old masters and moderns, and posterity itself. ~ A. Hyatt King

67. Mozart's music is so beautiful as to entice angels down to earth. ~ Franz Alexander von Kleist

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

69. Mozart resolved his emotions on a level that transformed them into moods uncontaminated by mortal anguish, enabling him to express the angelic anguish that is so peculiarly his own. ~ Yehudi Menuhin

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

73. Mozart was able to do what he wished in music and he never wished to do what was beyond him. ~ Romain Rolland

74. Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day! ~ Gioacchino Rossini

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

82. Designing an opera by Mozart is like doing something for God - it's a labor of love. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

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

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