Daniel Barenboim Quotes

On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.

All composers who came after were influenced by Beethoven, even during his lifetime, both by his personality and by his music. He was a father figure for generations.

Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.

I admire Johann Strauss a lot. I believe he was a genius of his time.

I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.

All my life I have regarded myself as one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and I will remain one until my last breath.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Mozart, the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste.

I'm a Beethoven freak. I listen to him all the time.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.

The Gershwin legacy is extraordinary because George Gershwin died in 1937, but his music is as fresh and vital today as when he originally created it.

He knows I rip him off every day. He's the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren't influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

I think there are very few people that I would give the title of genius to, really, but Beethoven unquestionably is one of them.

For me, Debussy is the door to all 20th-century music.

Julius Eastman is the kind of American genius not enough people know about.

Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived... I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary

There are some composers - at the head of whom stands Beethoven - who not only do not know when to stop but appear to stop many times before they actually do.

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him.

I wanted to honor [George Gershwin]. He's a great American songwriter.

Well, my paper has asked me to do a series: Lives of the Great Musicians, reading time 2 minutes.

Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.

Thank you Prince for all of your inspiration and sharing your increadible talents with the world. You will be incredibly missed.