I love classical music and often listen to symphonies or opera in the morning.
Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.
I hear the wind among the trees Playing the celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument.
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!
The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
This is what I want in heaven. . . words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies.
I have been told that a young would-be composer wrote to Mozart asking advice about how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding form and 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. ' Mozart replied, 'I never asked how.
The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.
An artist should make concessions to the listener. That is why Bruckner dedicated one of his symphonies to the Good Lord.
If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
Jazz tickles your muscles, symphonies stretch your soul.
One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.
Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings, And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill Some shallow notes from its great music brings.
What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.
I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.
Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
