I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice as to how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested, 'But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now.' And Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.'
Quotes about symphonies (16 Quotes)
I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time.
If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
Jazz tickles your muscles, symphonies stretch your soul.
I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note.
Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.
A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. 'But you were writing symphonies when you were my age.' the student protested. 'Yes, but I didnt have to ask how.'
Although, I am proud of all my Symphonies as they all have something special to say, my particular favourite is the Fifth. As the great Mahler expert Donald Mitchell said that if Mahler had written another Symphony, it would have been my Fifth!
Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.
As a small boy I had read about Beethoven in the Book of Knowledge, now I was listening enraptured to his sonatas and symphonies.
If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
This is what I want in heaven... words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies.
We've been performing with symphonies all of our career and it sounds so wonderful when they play 'My Girl' with the large string section, I want to turn around and look.
I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.
The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song I have tried all but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, 'I have finished my day's work' but I cannot say, 'I have finished my life's work' my day's work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.