Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

Why should we not enter into our inheritance in the church as well as the concert hall?

Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.

To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.