I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

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

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.

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

Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

A supreme composer can only come out of a musical nation.

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