Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

In opera, there is always too much singing.

If we look at the works of JS Bach ... on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.