Berlioz Quotes

In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz. ~ Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky

Music and love are the wings of the soul. ~ Hector Berlioz

The Prince stood beside the timpanist to count his rests for him and see that he came in in the right place. I suppressed all the trumpet passages which were clearly beyond the players' grasp. The solitary trombone was left to his own devices; but as he wisely confined himself to the notes with which he was thoroughly familiar, such as A flat, D and F, and was careful to avoid all others, his success in the role was almost entirely a silent one. ~ Hector Berlioz

Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love. ~ Hector Berlioz

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz ~ William L.K.

– But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?
– Man governs it himself, – Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.
– Pardon me, – the stranger responded gently, – but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period, well, say, a thousand years , but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? And in fact, – here the stranger turned to Berlioz, – imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem ... hem ... lung cancer ... – here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure - yes, cancer - narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word - and so your governing is over! You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was gov ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood. ~ Hector Berlioz

A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine. ~ Hector Berlioz

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. ~ Hector Berlioz

Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday 3PM. Come. Berlioz ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Heine commenting on the music of Louis Hector Berlioz: He is an immense nightingale, a lark as great as an eagle ... The music causes me to dream of fabulous empires, filled with fabulous sins. ~ Hector Berlioz

Bach is Bach just as God is God. ~ Hector Berlioz

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings. ~ Hector Berlioz

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill. ~ Franz Liszt

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments. ~ Hector Berlioz

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. ~ Hector Berlioz

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off! ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

Imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine. ~ Hector Berlioz

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices. ~ Hector Berlioz

It is so rare ... to find a complete person, with a soul, a heart and an imagination; so rare for characters as ardent and restless as ours to meet and to be matched together, that I hardly know how to tell you what happiness it gives me to know you. ~ Hector Berlioz

Letter from Van Gogh to Gauguin: Ah! my dear friend, to make of painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us ... a consolatory art for distressed hearts! There are as yet only a few who feel it as you and I do!!! [Letter 739, Arles, 21 January 1889] ~ Liesbeth Heenk

A feeble mind, conscious of its own feebleness, grows feeble under that very consciousness. As soon as the power of fear becomes known to it, there follows the fear of fear, and, on the first perturbation, reason abandons it. ~ Hector Berlioz

Time is a great teacher. Too bad it kills all of its pupils. ~ Louis Hector Berlioz

Time, time - that is our greatest master! Alas, like Ugolino, time devours its own children. ~ Hector Berlioz

To render my works properly requires a combination of extreme precision and irresistible verve, a regulated vehemence, a dreamy tenderness, and an almost morbid melancholy. ~ Hector Berlioz

It is difficult to put into words what I suffered-the longing that seemed to be tearing my heart out by the roots, the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold through my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying. Shakespeare himself never described this torture; but he counts it, in Hamlet, among the terrible of all the evils of existence. I had stopped composing; my mind seemed to become feebler as my feelings grew more intense. I did nothing. One power was left to me-to suffer. ~ Hector Berlioz

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it. ~ Hector Berlioz

Which of the two powers, Love or Music, can elevate man to the sublimest heights? ... It is a problem, and yet it seems to me that this is the answer: 'Love can give no idea of music; music can give an idea of love.' ... Why separate them? They are two wings of the soul. ~ Hector Berlioz

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all. ~ Hector Berlioz

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down. ~ Hector Berlioz