Quotes

[spaceray]

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
William F Buckley Jr.

[Chaszz]

Posted by Andrea:

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

.... "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)


Posted by Lysander:

"I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws"

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

(I hope Chaszz doesn't read this one!)

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I would normally not post this on the Beethoven forum, but these painful little darts have left me no alternative:

"Quite possibly the greatest artistic genius who ever lived."

- W. H. Auden on Wagner



[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited June 09, 2003).]

[lysander]

Hi Chaszz,

Of course, the brilliance of Wagner was that he wanted to combine Beetoven's music and Shakespeare's drama which he succeeded in fusing together in the 'Ring Cycle'.

"What had now become for the first time possible to combine what these two had done, and to fuse the poetic drama as developed to unprecedented heights by Shakespeare with symphonic music as developed to unprecedented depths by Beethoven into a single expressive medium, a single form of art, what one might call symphonic opera, or music drama"

From, Wagner and Philosophy.
- By, Bryan Magee.


( A fascinating read and accessible guide to the philosophical roots of Wagners music)




[This message has been edited by lysander (edited June 09, 2003).]

[Joy]

"Love, yes, love alone can make your life happy! O, God, let me find someone whose love I am allowed."
Beethoven

(I've been to Niagra Falls and I have to agree with Mahler, and throw in some 'presto' as well)!

------------------
'Truth and beauty joined'

[lysander]

Ludwig's mom said to Cecilia Fishcer;-

"If you want to take my good advice, remain single, and then you will have the most tranquil, most beautiful, most pleasurable life"

~ Maria Magdalena Beethoven ~


It strikes me that young Ludwig took his mothers advice and remained a confirmed bachelor.
Thank God that the union of Maria Magdalena and Johann Beethoven brought forth Ludwig -
our Joy to the World.



[This message has been edited by lysander (edited June 09, 2003).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by lysander:

Ludwig's mom said to Cecilia Fishcer;-

"If you want to take my good advice, remain single, and then you will have the most tranquil, most beautiful, most pleasurable life"

~ Maria Magdalena Beethoven ~

Well I can well understand why she said that, being married to Johann can't have been easy!

------------------
'Man know thyself'

[lysander]

Originally posted by Peter:
Well I can well understand why she said that, being married to Johann can't have been easy!

The poor dear! She has been described as a "quiet, suffering woman"
What tremendous consolation she would have received had she know that her son, Ludwig,
was to become one of the greatest composers in history.

[lysander]

Beethoven informed Zmeskall, 1817?
On dependence on his servants.


" it drives me to despair to think that owing to my poor hearing I am condemned to spend the greater part of my life with this class of people, the most infamous of all, and partly to depend upon them"

~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~




[This message has been edited by lysander (edited June 11, 2003).]

[lysander]

Beethoven writes to Nannette Streicher, 1817


"Truly I shall not keep Nanni (the housekeeper), quite apart from the fact that she is on top of it all, a terrible creature! Such people should be handled through fear, not love, I see that quite clearly now......Nanni is completely changed since I threw half a dozen books at her head. No doubt something from it managed by chance to get into her brain or her heart"

~ Beethoven ~

[lysander]

Beethoven and his housekeeper.


"Indeed the management of this household is still without management and it looks very much like an 'Allegro di Confusione'.....
perhaps the only thing of genius about me is that my belongings are not always in the best order"

~ Beethoven ~

[Peter]

"What I'd like best of all, time and again, would be to set myself to music."

Richard Strauss - letter to Hoffmannsthal 1927

------------------
'Man know thyself'

[Joy]

“Does he believe that I think of a wretched fiddle when the spirit speaks to me?”
To his friend, Schuppanzigh

------------------
'Truth and beauty joined'

[Diabelli]

"Mozart is the greatest composer of all. Beethoven created his music, but the music of Mozart is of such purity and beauty that one feels he merely found it—that it has always existed as part of the inner beauty of the universe waiting to be revealed."
-Albert Einstein

[lysander]

"To become a composer, one must first have studied harmony and counterpoint during a period of from seven to eleven years, so as
to accustom one's self to bend the inventive
faculty to the rules, whenever imagination
and feeling shall awaken"

~ Beethoven ~

[lysander]

" Into the old mould handed down to us, we must pour an element of genuine poetry"

~ Beethoven ~