a compilation of some of my favourite composer quotes:

orpheustheviola:

mikrokosmos:

doing-it-for-debussy:

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”  – Igor Stravinsky

“I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.” – Edvard Grieg 

“Never look at the trombones. It only encourages them.” – Richard Strauss

“He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper.” – Richard Strauss on Schoenberg

“I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.” – Ludvig van Beethoven

“I have written a chorale both sober and suitable. In it I have put everything I know about boredom. I dedicate this to those who do not like me.” – Erik Satie

“

Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.” – Gioacchino Rossini

“What a good thing this isn’t music.” – Gioacchino Rossini on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique 

“Oh how wonderful, really wonderful opera would be if there were no singers!” – Gioacchino Rossini

“In opera there is always too much singing.” – Claude Debussy

“Bring me coffee before I turn into a goat!” – Johann Sebastian Bach

“Listening to the 5th Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.” – Aaron Copland 

“The audience expected something big, something colossal, but they were served instead with some agitated water in a saucer.” – Louis Schnieder on Debussy’s La Mer

“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.” – Clara Schumann on Liszt 

“What a giftless bastard!” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on Brahms

“Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting.” – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“Bach on the wrong notes” – 

Sergei Prokofiev on Stravinsky 

And, saving the best for last…

“Lick my ass up and down” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 

Feel free to add more! (Also please don’t think that I agree with all of these, I am a huge fan of Symphonie Fantastique and La Mer!!)

“I am in the smallest room in my house. Your review is in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.” – Max Reger

Whoever thought that classical musicians/composers were old, boring, dead people clearly do not understand the amount of salt there is to go around here.