Quotes of Mozart - somelinesforyou

“ No opera of Mozart's has stimulated biographers' wishful thinking in such rich measure as Die Zauberflete. It is considered his swan song, a concluding apotheosis, a return to divine simplicity. ”

- Wolfgang Hildesheimer

“ When I was a kid, I won a contest and played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony, and I've written some movie scores, and I've been listening to orchestral music for years. ”

- Herbie Hancock

“ If Beethoven and Bach hooked up with Mozart and made a band, they could be a distant runner up to The D. ”

- Jack Black

“ Every day before school, I would bang away on Czerny, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart-and throw in a little Jerry Lee Lewis when I thought no one was around to correct me. ”

- Lamar Alexander

“ It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year. ”

- Tom Lehrer

“ We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy. ”

- Rebecca West

“ Mozart is sweet sunshine. ”

- Antonin Dvorak

“ I've outdone anyone you can name — Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500. ”

- James Brown

“ It is a sobering thought, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years. ”

- Tom Lehrer

“ I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven. ”

- Richard Wagner

“ When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms… ”

- Steven Halpern

“ I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey… ”

- Igor Stravinsky

“ Shakespeare wrote his sonnets within a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote his sonatas within an equally rigid discipline - exposition, development, and recapitulation… ”

- David Ogilvy

“ I became a big Stravinsky-oholic and became involved in listening to classical music. Mozart and Beethoven, no. Schumann, no. Stravinsky, yes. Ravel, yes. Benjamin Britten, yes. Paul Hindemith, yes. These are my idols, even today, in classical music. ”

- J. J. Johnson

“ Mozart's job classification was to write music, which he did for ballets and operas. He got paid to do that, and taught on the side. He wasn't a waiter. He didn't sell mutual funds. Those are all noble professions, but if you want to be a professional composer, then you're writing dramatic music for film and television. ”

- Bill Conti
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