Johannes Brahms Quotes

Sometimes I think albums are so ambitious, they don't stand as bodies of work because you try to achieve so much, and sometimes we need to do less. Say less.

It's not what you play but what you leave out that makes the difference.

I always try not to overload my music with orchestration and to use only those instruments that are absolutely necessary.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

When you play Mozart, it's so clean, it's so simple. It's the body naked.

Acknowledge the elegance of simplicity.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

For better or for worse, in 'The Last Savage,' I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

Everything must be carried out in extreme sobriety.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

White is actually one of my favorite colors. I have a white car. I love white.

I like to push myself to achieve a certain quality, eliminate the excess detail. I always want a high degree of purity.

Less is only more where more is no good.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

The essence of style is a simple way of saying something complex.

I usually go with the 'less is more' approach.

So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.

The way that I write is I just write a ton of music in the background of my life, and then I just bring it into rehearsal. It's, like, 'Okay, guys. It goes like this. Let's smooth it out.'

It's amazing to me how often the answer to making something sound better is to play something less.

I always think less is more.

I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you've finished it.

You've got to chop back the performance like a rose bush. That's when it's beautiful.

I've come to realize ways of making music without being excessive.

I started writing music as a composer in school, in the classical tradition.