Brahms Quotes

I saw Brahms's Hungarian Rhapsody on television when I was two. Tom and Jerry were playing it together. I thought, 'Hey, if a cat can play like that, why can't I?' ~ Lang Lang

A symphony is no joke. ~ Johannes Brahms

After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost. ~ Bennett Cerf

I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I'm good for a Haydn quintet. ~ Daniel Handler

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world. ~ Jane Asher

The three greatest composers are Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. All the others are cretins. ~ Hans Von Bulow

At breakfast, I might pass a Brahms symphony in my head. Then I am called to the phone, and half an hour later I find it's been going on all the time and I'm in the third movement. ~ Arthur Rubinstein

I stick to playing Brahms, but I love listening to Led Zeppelin, and I've also been a big fan of Earth Wind and Fire since the Seventies and of The Gap Band since the Eighties. ~ Condoleezza Rice

The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary ~ George Bernard Shaw

Straight-away the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration. ~ Johannes Brahms

If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon. ~ Johannes Brahms

It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table ... So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them. ~ Johannes Brahms

My things really are written with an appalling lack of practicality! ~ Johannes Brahms

For the shallow delights of matrimony and opera I have no courage. ~ Johannes Brahms

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table. ~ Johannes Brahms

I play a lot chamber music.As for something that's hard for me to play, before I leave this Earth I'm hoping to play Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Brahms' friends in Budapest finally managed to talk him into attending the performance of Don Giovanni - he had initially turned down their invitation, arguing that he preferred to read the score and had never seen or heard a decent performance of the work. He would even prefer a cold beer, he insisted. But in the end he allowed his friends to drag him along to their box, where he demonstratively settled down on a sofa at the back in the hope of enjoying a rest. But it was not long before he was making increasingly inarticulate noises indicative of his enthusiasm, and at the end of the first act he was heard to shout out: 'Most excellent, admirable, what a deuce of a fellow!' He then ran on to the stage and embraced Mahler with typically grumpy cordiality. ~ Jens Malte Fischer

To follow in Beethoven's footsteps transcends one's strength. ~ Johannes Brahms

Study Bach. There you will find everything. ~ Johannes Brahms

Even if you're playing Brahms or a Beethoven concerto, you've got to have a different vantage point, slightly, each time. ~ Nigel Kennedy

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle
The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;
we rustled into place. Then violins
vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,
seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,
bit by bit, the vigor from the red,
the blazing blue, so that the listening eye
saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes
of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held
the holy glowing fantasy together.
The music surged; the glow became a milk,
a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed
until our beating hearts, our violins
were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead. ~ John Updike

Never criticize the composition of a Royal Highness. You never know who may have written it. ~ Johannes Brahms

Part of what Brahms and others could never quite get over was that Bruckner the composer of epic symphonies behaved, much of the time, like a nincompoop. ~ Jan Swafford

Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully. ~ Johannes Brahms

We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it. ~ Johannes Brahms

It is a real pleasure to see music so bright and spontaneous expressed with corresponding ease and grace. ~ Johannes Brahms

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are. ~ Elliott Carter

Sweet music It beats love because there aren't any wounds: in the morning she turns on the radio, Brahms or Ives or Stravinsky or Mozart. She boils the eggs counting the seconds out loud: 56, 57, 58 ... she peels the eggs, brings them to me in bed. After breakfast it's the same chair and listen to the classical music. She's on her first glass of scotch and her third cigarette. I tell her I must go to the racetrack. She's been here about 2 nights and 2 days. "When will I see you again?" I ask. She suggests that might be up to me. I nod and Mozart plays. ~ Charles Bukowski

Where there's a will, there's a potential for murder ~ Brahms Lewis

I visualized myself at Norma's house, stretched out on her couch, my eyes closed, and she at bthe paino playing a powerful movement from some Symphony in D major by Beethoven, by Brahms, by Sibelius, by Tschaikowsky, by anybody, by Thomas Wolfe, by Ernest Hemmingway, by William Saroyan, by Jack Kerouac, by George Apostolos, by Sebastian the Prince, by Love, by Earth, by Fire, by Water, by All, Everything, Love you and I, me myself, egotist, Earth, Fire, a mad and wild concoction of all Life, and of the all-embracing All. ~ Jack Kerouac

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He clutched the harmonica to his chest and cried into his pillow. He could have sworn he heard music...the Brahms...first as a child's lullaby, then a mournful lament, and finally, a staccato march, accompanied by the ominous sound of jackboots. ~ Pam Munoz Ryan

I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer. ~ Johannes Brahms

Brahms stayed an extra day to hear my [Fifth] Symphony and was very kind ... I like his honesty and open-mindedness. Neither he nor the players liked the finale, which I also think rather horrible. ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

If our cultural lives are sick, it is likely to be an impediment to our spiritual lives. Much popular culture promotes a spirit of restlessness. That is likely to be an obstacle to prayer, to concerned reflection, and to attentiveness to the needs of others. Popular culture also has an extremely limited range of sensibilities. I have never heard a work of popular music that has the depth of poignancy of the opening bars of Brahms's 'German Requiem,' for example, with its text, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.' I learn something about mourning when I hear Brahms; I know of no similar lessons in popular music. ~ Kenneth A. Myers

In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. ~ Brian Eno

If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that. ~ Kurt Masur

Fortunately, I started very young, so I read music very well. And my favorite composers to play are Brahms and Mozart. ~ Condoleezza Rice

The only true immortality lies in one's children.
[Letter to his friend, Richard Heuberger] ~ Johannes Brahms

In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles. ~ Johannes Brahms

Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them. ~ Johannes Brahms

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way. ~ Daniel Barenboim

He considered for a moment, then started to play a piece that was very familiar to Ruth, although she had no idea what it was. It was lilting and wistful, and she could have sung the melody if she had wished.
"Alright?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Yes. Exactly."
It was effortless and perfect, and he played it through to the end, closing with the softest and most delicate chords, which hung and faded in the quiet hall like the grains of dust raining through the evening light. Ruth was touched. It was all she had wanted. He did not move until there was complete silence again, then he closed the lid without saying anything, and stood up, shoving back the chair. ... "What was that piece?"
"A Brahms waltz."
"Hasn't it got a name?" she wanted it to remember.
"Number fifteen. Opus thirty-nine."
It hadn't sounded like numbers to Ruth. ~ K.M. Peyton

Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly. ~ Johannes Brahms

Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote. ~ Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

If we cannot write with the beauty of Mozart, let us at least try to write with his purity. ~ Johannes Brahms

What would become of all historical biography if it was written only with consideration for other peoples' feelings? ~ Johannes Brahms

Classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting. ~ Daniel Breaker

I am a delusion on which people project all the things they are not. I am a shared figment of imagination. ~ Brahms Lewis

The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's. ~ Joseph Joachim

The only work that can be compared to Chopin's Etudes, innovatively, where every note is essential and one becomes completely exposed, is the Brahms-Paganini variations. These are etudes - not as interesting musically as, say, the Brahms-Handel - but they are incredible. ~ Carlo Grante

Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding. ~ Janet Fitch

Leave off driving your composers. It might prove to be as dangerous as it is generally unnecessary. After all, composing cannot be turned out like spinning or sewing. Some respected colleagues (Bach, Mozart, Schubert) have spoilt the world terribly. But if we can't imitate them in the beauty of their writing, we should certainly beware of seeking to match the speed of their writing. It would also be unjust to put all the blame on idleness alone. Many factors combine to make writing harder for us (my contemporaries), and especially me. If, incidentally, they would use us poets for some other purpose, they would see that we are thoroughly and naturally industrious dispositions ... I have no time: otherwise I should love to chat on the difficulty of composing and how irresponsible publishers are. ~ Johannes Brahms

I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so it's difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting - I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels. ~ Nigel Kennedy

I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music. ~ Elie Wiesel