Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
German composer who lived predominantly in Vienna, Austria.
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Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain.
Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.)
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
The day-to-day exhausted me!
Ich werde im Himmel hören! (I will hear in heaven!)
The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery.
I want to seize fate by the throat.
There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman.
Another equally true saying of Schumann is that, compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man. For it must be confessed that one's attitudes towards him is almost always that of sympathy, attraction, and love, rarely that of embarrassment or fear. Here and there only, as in the Rosamund B minor Entr'acte, or the Finale of the 10th symphony, does he compel his listeners with an irrestistible power; and yet how different is this compulsion from the strong, fierce, merciless coercion, with which Beethoven forces you along, and bows and bends you to his will.
Muß es sein? Es muß sein.
I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.
Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.
Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
A colossus beyond the grasp of most mortals, with his totally uncompromising power, his unsensual and uningratiating way with music as with people.
You are going to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-frustrated wishes. The Genius of Mozart is mourning and weeping over the death of her pupil. She has found a refuge but no occupation with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him she wishes to form a union with another. With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands.
When his friends, says Czerny, speak to him of his youthful renown, he replies: "Ah, nonsense! I have never thought of writing for renown and glory. What I have in my heart must out; that is why I write."
Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?
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