Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.

When I discovered that I had been made custodian of this gift, in my earliest childhood, I pledged myself to God to be worthy of it, but I have received uncovenanted mercies all my life. The custodian has too often kept faith on his all-too-worldly terms.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.