Gian Carlo Menotti Quotes

When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

I don't think Beethoven expresses religious truth. He expresses a human truth.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.

If you look back, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were mixing music and humor all the time.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.

A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.

I love music, especially classical like Verdi; it's a great way to relax.

I play the piano and have been playing since I was 7, mainly classical Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart.

I always admired very much the virtuosity in Strauss because, really, he's a master of using the orchestra. And I like virtuosity, I must say, even if the taste of the music is not always mine.

Mozart combined high formality and playfulness that delights as no other composition in any other medium does.

The most perfect melodic shapes are found in Mozart; he has the lightness of touch which is the true objective ... Listen to the remarkable expansion of a Mozart melody, to Cherubino's 'Voi che sapete', for instance. You think it is coming to an end, but it goes farther, even farther.

The world's most famous and popular language is music.

The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music.

I do believe that music has an intense power to connect us together, to inspire us to become ourselves.

Music is a prerogative of those who are willing to spend time to study it, understand and love it, well aware of the fact that one life is not enough to improve just one single note of what has already been written and performed.

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.

Music truly is the universal language.

There used to be a certain condescension to Mozart. His music was regarded as pleasant. He was a porcelain figure playing a porcelain harpsichord.

After conducting Wagner, Beethoven's triple concerto is like taking an Alka Seltzer.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

Well, I don't know any piece by heart, but Mozart goes something like this... What do you think?

Anyone who knows classical music and loves classical music has heard the Beethoven Seventh hundreds of times probably in their life.

Music is the marriage of the feelings of the living to the wisdom of the dead.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.