Compilation of quotes about music

These quotes comprise my philosophy of music. I won't provide any reaction to them individually other than to encourace the reader to give them each some thought, as Callas said be like a sponge and absorb it all. Emphasis in the quotes is mine.

Be it a little song or a great symphony that you compose, it will only be a masterwork if that same motto suits it which the great Beethoven was entitled to write on the score of his Missa Somnis: From the heart -- may it go to the heart

- Felix Weingartner, On the performance of Beethoven's Symphonies and other essays, pg 304

A bell of good quality vibrates by itself.

- Marcel Moyse, The Flute and its Problems, pg 15

A beautiful tone is already expressive because of its color, its brilliance, its fullness, its resonance.

- Marcel Moyse

For Casals, the limitations of his instrument were, in fact, an artistic necessity, "I want to have to fight for my expression."

- David Blum, Casals and the art of Interpretation, pg 133

Maximum tension, not just high tension, maximum tension was what he conveyed both to the audience and the musicians.

- Klaus Konig on Carlos Kleiber, Traces to Nowhere (oboist in SDR Orchestra)

Expression was his supreme concern, he was fanatical about it, an expressionist

- Brigitte Fassbaender on Carlos Kleiber, Traces to Nowhere

Don't let anyone get bored with anything you play.

- Glenn Dicterow, Master Class at Music Academy of the West, Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic

We have to read what the composer would have wanted: a thousand colors, expressions. It's really not as easy as all that, if one really cares that much -- and I do. I do. 

- Maria Callas, quote taken from Sound in Motion, David McGill 

I remember once we were at Covent Garden doing Traviata and at the end of "ah, fors'è lui" she would attack this note very softly and she'd crack it every night. I'd go backstage and say "oh Maria attack it a little bit louder, more forte, and then when you have the note you can diminish it and have your effect." This kept going night after night and finally I said, "You are a Greek, no use talking to you." She said, "Nicola, I won't comprimise, I'll crack every night but I'm dying and that's the way it's going to be."

- Nicola Rescigno, How to Sing Bel Canto
http://youtu.be/cgQCDD5cc7s?t=1h48m23s

But in the days of tape, I used to spend a lot of time following the recording session in matching tapes and splicing things together. Now I simply leave that mostly to the technicians. I find that it’s as much as I can handle to try to get the performances as error-free and as full of life as possible.

- Robert Shaw
http://www.bruceduffie.com/shaw.html

I still have this couple of weeks before the season opens. I did have some illness at the end of last year, so I’m a little bit behind. I just have to get fifteen or twenty scores into the library for the first three or four or five weeks of the season. My principle is that the orchestra player has every right to ask how loud do you want it, or how soft, or how fast, or how slow, or where do you want the crescendo, and so on. If you mark all those things in the parts, if you can make the five- or six-thousand critical markings in a score that will answer all of the orchestral players’ questions, they need not be asked in rehearsal, and it saves a hell of a lot of money! [Laughs] It doesn’t have to stop the rehearsal. So we follow the custom in our library, of trying to make it possible for the musician to have in front of him exactly what he’s supposed to be doing and when he’s supposed to be doing it. We feel it leaves the musicians free to then use his own intelligence to add whatever he can to that. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Anyway, you’ve been just as gracious as you could be, and I thank you for you kindness.

- Robert Shaw
http://www.bruceduffie.com/shaw.html

Music must always sing

- Rory HR, the idea of course is not mine

Dear Georg! The first word that I let you speak in public was devoted to Mozart! With it I wished, symbolically, to place you under the protection of our divine Wolfgang Amadeus. Mozart -- the combination of soul and naturalness, of grace and depth -- is music itself. May he be the beacon to which you should look up all your life, for its light will always remind you whether you have distanced yourself from the ideal of artistic beauty or whether you have approached it. Therefore: Mozart forever! Your faithful friend and teacher, Rich. Robert.

- Rich. Robert, George Szell's piano teacher

What you see in these quartets is an incredible ease of writing. They're made out of a fabric that is so easily torn, almost like looking at an incredibly perfect jewel you would stare at and watch it glitter. Any imperfection you might bring to that is like scratching the surface of that perfect diamond.

- Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton, Emerson Quartet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXWJf-V4CBU