Arnold Schoenberg (1874 – 1951)
Austrian and later American composer.
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I find above all that the expression, "atonal music," is most unfortunate it is on a par with calling flying "the art of not falling," or swimming "the art of not drowning."
My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.
There is a great Man living in this country a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.
...if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.
Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. ... Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value.
An artistic impression is substantially the resultant of two components. One what the work of art gives the onlooker the other, what he is capable of giving to the work of art.
I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire.
I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes.
Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.
I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality.
There is still much good music that can be written in C major.
My music is not difficult, my music is played badly.
I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.
There are no more geniuses, only critics.
A regular Friday audience, 90 percent feminine and 100 percent well-bred, sat stoically yesterday through thirty minutes of the most cacophonous world premiere ever heard here - the first performance anywhere of a new Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg. Yesterday's piece combines the best sound effects of a hen yard at feeding time, a brisk morning in Chinatown and practice hour at a busy music conservatory. The effect on the vast majority of hearers is that of a lecture on the fourth dimension delivered in Chinese.
If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip... Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears
Hauer looks for laws. Good. But he looks for them where he will not find them.
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